Families leaving ACPS

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure I get your point. First, you suggested that all people with money leave because of dissatisfaction with the schools. Then someone others posted that in their experience that's not true as a general matter i.e., kids are continuing on to GW and TC and that moves are generally due to other reasons like being transferred rather than dissatisfaction with the schools. Then you post a bunch of stuff about the FARMS rates. Yes, there are poor kids in Alexandria. I have met a lot of them. Many are delightful, smart, hardworking kids. What is your point? That they are undeserving of an education? That non-FARMS kids should not be in school with them? I for one would much rather have my kid in school with her FARMS- kid friends than hanging around with people as prejudiced as you.

[Anonymous]

Meant to acknowledge the one poster who said her family was moving -- even then she didn't say the school was bad, just that the TAG program was not serving her particular kid. Sorry, PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure I get your point. First, you suggested that all people with money leave because of dissatisfaction with the schools. Then someone others posted that in their experience that's not true as a general matter i.e., kids are continuing on to GW and TC and that moves are generally due to other reasons like being transferred rather than dissatisfaction with the schools. Then you post a bunch of stuff about the FARMS rates. Yes, there are poor kids in Alexandria. I have met a lot of them. Many are delightful, smart, hardworking kids. What is your point? That they are undeserving of an education? That non-FARMS kids should not be in school with them? I for one would much rather have my kid in school with her FARMS- kid friends than hanging around with people as prejudiced as you.

Again, my point is that the upper income families in ACPS are the minority. They have the ability and options to move.

FARMs students are the majority of students in ACPS. They are not moving.

The message ACPS sends is that very few kids actually leave the school and the perception is wrong but the reality is that the number of upper income white kids who leave is high but this is not accurately portrayed in aggregate statistics provided by ACPS because they are such a small number of the school population to begin with. They actually now have a dashboard of stats for the schools and you can look at the stats and see the decline of students from K to 5 over a given year and then through the years as well as see the decline in number of students by race. They have nice little graphs that chart this out. I notice that they ACPS didn't do anything to promote this site to parents when it came online this winter.

Also, I have met many FARMS students who are not delightful, smart or hardworking. They are in fact rude and lazy and wish to get by with the minimum effort. I have also met many upper income students who are like that as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure I get your point. First, you suggested that all people with money leave because of dissatisfaction with the schools. Then someone others posted that in their experience that's not true as a general matter i.e., kids are continuing on to GW and TC and that moves are generally due to other reasons like being transferred rather than dissatisfaction with the schools. Then you post a bunch of stuff about the FARMS rates. Yes, there are poor kids in Alexandria. I have met a lot of them. Many are delightful, smart, hardworking kids. What is your point? That they are undeserving of an education? That non-FARMS kids should not be in school with them? I for one would much rather have my kid in school with her FARMS- kid friends than hanging around with people as prejudiced as you.

Again, my point is that the upper income families in ACPS are the minority. They have the ability and options to move.

FARMs students are the majority of students in ACPS. They are not moving.

The message ACPS sends is that very few kids actually leave the school and the perception is wrong but the reality is that the number of upper income white kids who leave is high but this is not accurately portrayed in aggregate statistics provided by ACPS because they are such a small number of the school population to begin with. They actually now have a dashboard of stats for the schools and you can look at the stats and see the decline of students from K to 5 over a given year and then through the years as well as see the decline in number of students by race. They have nice little graphs that chart this out. I notice that they ACPS didn't do anything to promote this site to parents when it came online this winter.

Also, I have met many FARMS students who are not delightful, smart or hardworking. They are in fact rude and lazy and wish to get by with the minimum effort. I have also met many upper income students who are like that as well.

You really should network with different crowds then.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have children enrolled in Acps, just curious how many families are moving away this summer.

When I was in ACPS, the exodus started around 3rd grade as the middle schools loomed. But I've heard GW is improving so I don't know if there's the same beaten path out of town, especially given Arlington's crowding.

.

+1. Would much rather stay in ACPS than move to the giant cluster_uck of APS right now.

No, APS is still a hugely better system and ACPS has its own crowding issues.

Meanwhile, I think TC WIlliams just failed to meet accreditation again or something.

[Anonymous]

TC Williams has 2619 students. Divide that by three to get roughly the size of each class (TC serves grades 10, 11, 12). That is roughly 873 seniors. Only 331 of them are college-bound.

http://www.alexandrianews.org/2016/05/congratulations-to-t-c-williams-college-bound-students/

One kid did get into Princeton.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure I get your point. First, you suggested that all people with money leave because of dissatisfaction with the schools. Then someone others posted that in their experience that's not true as a general matter i.e., kids are continuing on to GW and TC and that moves are generally due to other reasons like being transferred rather than dissatisfaction with the schools. Then you post a bunch of stuff about the FARMS rates. Yes, there are poor kids in Alexandria. I have met a lot of them. Many are delightful, smart, hardworking kids. What is your point? That they are undeserving of an education? That non-FARMS kids should not be in school with them? I for one would much rather have my kid in school with her FARMS- kid friends than hanging around with people as prejudiced as you.

Except, there's deliberate segregation WITHIN the ACPS schools, hence the "Yale or Jail" moniker. The rich and poor don't mix.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not sure I get your point. First, you suggested that all people with money leave because of dissatisfaction with the schools. Then someone others posted that in their experience that's not true as a general matter i.e., kids are continuing on to GW and TC and that moves are generally due to other reasons like being transferred rather than dissatisfaction with the schools. Then you post a bunch of stuff about the FARMS rates. Yes, there are poor kids in Alexandria. I have met a lot of them. Many are delightful, smart, hardworking kids. What is your point? That they are undeserving of an education? That non-FARMS kids should not be in school with them? I for one would much rather have my kid in school with her FARMS- kid friends than hanging around with people as prejudiced as you.

Again, my point is that the upper income families in ACPS are the minority. They have the ability and options to move.

FARMs students are the majority of students in ACPS. They are not moving.

The message ACPS sends is that very few kids actually leave the school and the perception is wrong but the reality is that the number of upper income white kids who leave is high but this is not accurately portrayed in aggregate statistics provided by ACPS because they are such a small number of the school population to begin with. They actually now have a dashboard of stats for the schools and you can look at the stats and see the decline of students from K to 5 over a given year and then through the years as well as see the decline in number of students by race. They have nice little graphs that chart this out. I notice that they ACPS didn't do anything to promote this site to parents when it came online this winter.

Also, I have met many FARMS students who are not delightful, smart or hardworking. They are in fact rude and lazy and wish to get by with the minimum effort. I have also met many upper income students who are like that as well.

Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool. That's actually a pretty neat little data display. I now understand your point, although "ability and options to move" doesn't necessarily mean that those families are moving. Again, my own experience is that upper income white kids we know are staying with ACPS, at least through middle school (we have not gotten to HS yet, so I cannot speak to the migration to TC). I know that anecdotes do not equal data, but I do think that the people who say "all upper income white kids leave ACPS" don't know what they are talking about. I tracked my two kids' classes on the dashboard. The older's class numbers reflected the 4 moves away I know about over the years. Again, moves that were made not because of schools but for reasons largely out of the control of the families so really cannot be used as an indictment of the schools -- those families would have moved whether they were in ACPS, APS, or FFX because of their jobs/circumstances. The younger's actually showed an increase in white kids by 5 (obviously no information about income levels on the dashboard, so they may or may not be "upper income white kids" to whom you refer). I also looked at other classes and other schools, although not as closely, and noted additions and deletions in all the demographic categories over the years, so I'm not sure that says much at all about trends in enrollment. Lots to unpack in that dashboard though. Interesting stuff.

[Anonymous]

"Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool."

Link please?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool."

Link please?

I found it through PP's link to the fast facts, but here is the link to the dashboard home page: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/idashboard/

[Anonymous]

^^ Thanks much!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool."

Link please?

I found it through PP's link to the fast facts, but here is the link to the dashboard home page: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/idashboard/

Too bad the application won't work- I get this message when I click through to the app "The guest user account "guest" is invalid."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool."

Link please?

I found it through PP's link to the fast facts, but here is the link to the dashboard home page: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/idashboard/

Too bad the application won't work- I get this message when I click through to the app "The guest user account "guest" is invalid."

When I hit the link it also says "guest is invalid". Please explain this fellow Alexandrians!

Welcome to the ACPS iDashboard

The iDashboard provides a way for the public to look at division-wide enrollment and performance data in an easily consumable way. The iDashboard is a way for the public to see how ACPS is progressing in line with ACPS 2020 and the benchmarks set by the Commonwealth of Virginia. It will help measure how Every Student Succeeds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool."

Link please?

I found it through PP's link to the fast facts, but here is the link to the dashboard home page: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/idashboard/

Too bad the application won't work- I get this message when I click through to the app "The guest user account "guest" is invalid."

Crazy! I was the one who originally posted about this and I guess they had too many users today or something Seriously I don't know what happened. This morning I got all kinds of nice graphs and charts but now I too get the guest user message.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Thanks for pointing out the dashboard tool."

Link please?

I found it through PP's link to the fast facts, but here is the link to the dashboard home page: http://www.acps.k12.va.us/idashboard/

Too bad the application won't work- I get this message when I click through to the app "The guest user account "guest" is invalid."

Crazy! I was the one who originally posted about this and I guess they had too many users today or something Seriously I don't know what happened. This morning I got all kinds of nice graphs and charts but now I too get the guest user message.

I heard from the web admin this morning that they moved to a new server and the guest account wasn't configured properly. I still think it was usage - you don't move servers in the middle of the day.