Where do you consider MCPS high schools on a scale of good-bad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well this is fun!

Tier 1
Churchill
Whitman
BCC
WJ

Tier 2
Wootton
Poolesville
QO
Sherwood

Tier 3
Damascus
RM
Blair
Clarksburg

Tier 4
Northwest
Magruder
Rockville
Blake

Tier 5
All other schools.

I would send my kids to any school in tiers 1-3. We need more posts like this!!!

I'm a Sherwood parent; I don't think the school is at all good. If it's one of the better schools in MCPS, then MCPS is in trouble.

What specifically about Sherwood do you think is not good?

I'm a Sherwood parent, too. It's ridiculously subpar---particularly if you are in regular classes.

But we know lots of girls who exclusively took APs and were well prepared for college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, I have a kid at Wheaton and we are not low income. And honestly it is (so far) great.

Didn't wheaton get the former science coach from Blair, and they recently won some science competition. Most of the HSs seem to have some interesting programs, so if your child is into it, I think they can do well in most of the HS. However, I do think it's important for a student to have a peer cohort.

In which high schools do academically-motivated students not have a peer cohort, and how do you know?

In schools that have a lower % of high achieving students, it's much harder to find a peer cohort that you can also be friends with. The greater the diversity, the greater chance most kids have in finding their peer group.

I don't live in a W cluster. We chose RM for its diversity. I'm sure most schools have varying amounts of high achieving students, but when the numbers dwindle, it's just harder to find.

How hard is this though?

Just be friends with the couple dozen kids that you always see in your AP classes

Believe it or not, it can be hard.

I went to a low performing schools but took AP/honors classes. I saw the same kids in most of my classes, but none of them were my "good" friends because outside of class, we had different interests.

[Anonymous]

Nonsense.

My boys have a large peer group. My junior has 100s of classmates in advanced classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I'm a Sherwood parent, too. It's ridiculously subpar---particularly if you are in regular classes.

But we know lots of girls who exclusively took APs and were well prepared for college.

That's the thing... if you are a good student and can find a good peer cohort who are also your good friends, you would be fine in most HSs in MoCo. I really thnk it just depends on the student.

I know someone whose DC doesn't want to go to a W HS school even though they are zoned for it because the student was bullied. This is a high achieving kid who is just a bit quirky.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, I have a kid at Wheaton and we are not low income. And honestly it is (so far) great.

Didn't wheaton get the former science coach from Blair, and they recently won some science competition. Most of the HSs seem to have some interesting programs, so if your child is into it, I think they can do well in most of the HS. However, I do think it's important for a student to have a peer cohort.

In which high schools do academically-motivated students not have a peer cohort, and how do you know?

In schools that have a lower % of high achieving students, it's much harder to find a peer cohort that you can also be friends with. The greater the diversity, the greater chance most kids have in finding their peer group.

I don't live in a W cluster. We chose RM for its diversity. I'm sure most schools have varying amounts of high achieving students, but when the numbers dwindle, it's just harder to find.

So now it's not just "there has to be a peer cohort!" but also "there has to be a large peer cohort because otherwise you might not be able to find friends!!!"? How large does this peer cohort have to be, in your opinion? Keeping in mind that all of the MCPS high schools, even the small ones, are large.

Depends on your child. Most people buy a house in a specific cluster before the child hits HS, so it's hard to tell what they will be like when they hit HS age, so it's just easier to hedge your bets.

[Anonymous]

Here's a few more added.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great schools rankings are as follows

Churchill-10
BCC-9
Poolesville-9
WJ-9
Wootton-9
Damascus-8
Quince Orchard-8
Whitman-8
Clarksburg-7
Northwest-7
Sherwood-7
Magruder-6
Montgomery Blair-6
Paint Branch-5
Rockville-5
Seneca Valley-4
Springbrook-4
Watkins Mill-4
Wheaton-4

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nonsense.

My boys have a large peer group. My junior has 100s of classmates in advanced classes.

+ 1. In a rural area, finding that cohort is hard. But in an urban, dense area like many parts of Montgomery County, including some of the much scorned DCC in DCUM land, there are wealthy neighborhoods feeding these schools and then areas where you find 500-600K houses full of families of feds, lawyers, scientists, senior level nonprofit workers, think tanks, academics, etc. who feel priced out of the wealthier parts but have kids in the cohort. And then of course, not all kids on FARMs are low performers even though that is the stereotype on here.

[Anonymous]

How are those graduation rates calculated? If a student is not on diploma track, are they still included in the numbers? LFI, SCB, and Autism are certificate-track programs so any school that houses them (and some have multiple) would take a hit if so. For example, Wheaton has LFI and SCB. Einstein has LFI, SCB, and Extensions. BCC has nothing. Nor does Blair or Poolesville. It wouldn't be a huge hit, but it would be a few percentage points.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are those graduation rates calculated? If a student is not on diploma track, are they still included in the numbers? LFI, SCB, and Autism are certificate-track programs so any school that houses them (and some have multiple) would take a hit if so. For example, Wheaton has LFI and SCB. Einstein has LFI, SCB, and Extensions. BCC has nothing. Nor does Blair or Poolesville. It wouldn't be a huge hit, but it would be a few percentage points.

What are LFI and SCB?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PPs can say what you want, no one is moving to a SV neighborhood so their kid can experience diversity, even though it’ll be (arguably) the nicest school in the county (bc it’s the newest).

People don’t like diversity or low income. But they like to pretend they do, then make an excuse about how they ended up in a good neighborhood “Well my parents bought this house in the 90’s and we wanted to save for a family soooo...”

This is such an odd thing to say. People are moving into areas zoned for Seneca Valley High School all the time. There are currently about 1,200 students at Seneca Valley High School, almost all of whom (if not all) live in areas zoned for Seneca Valley High School. Maybe you meant to say, "People I know"?

Did you read what I said? I didn’t say people weren’t moving into the area I said people weren’t PURPOSELY moving I to the area for SVHS specifically and/or for the diversity. Sure people are moving the the area, but I doubt it’s because they want their kids at the school (at least the old school)

[Anonymous]

Since they're presumably not moving to the area by accident, I'm going to assume that they're PURPOSELY moving to the area.

Not everyone wants what you want. Not everyone wants what I want. And that's fine.

[Anonymous]

I know someone who decided to stay in their Seneca Valley neighborhood so their kid could do IB there. Her kid has a good group of friends. They're not all gang members or drug dealers, you know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here's a few more added.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great schools rankings are as follows

Churchill-10
BCC-9
Poolesville-9
WJ-9
Wootton-9
Damascus-8
Quince Orchard-8
Whitman-8
Clarksburg-7
Northwest-7
Sherwood-7
Magruder-6
Montgomery Blair-6
Paint Branch-5
Rockville-5
Seneca Valley-4
Springbrook-4
Watkins Mill-4
Wheaton-4

GreatSchools rankings are meaningless drivel. This is a simple average that merely reflects an areas SES and has nothing to do with educational outcomes. It also fails to capture the racist nonsense and bullying that are ubiquitous at schools like Churchill.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you want to base your ratings on something, at least do it by graduation rates. You can come up with your own tiers from here.

1. Walt Whitman High (97.9 percent)
2. Thomas S. Wootton High (97.8 percent)
3. Winston Churchill High (97.4 percent)
4. Poolesville High (96.2 percent)
5. Walter Johnson High (95.8 percent)
6. Quince Orchard High (95.6 percent)
7. Northwest High (94.95 percent)
8. Bethesda-Chevy Chase High (94.42 percent)
9. Damascus High (93.98 percent)
10. Sherwood High (93.89 percent)
11. Richard Montgomery High (92.24 percent)
12. Clarksburg High (91.52 percent)
13. Paint Branch High (90.55 percent)
14. James Hubert Blake High (90.21 percent)
15. Montgomery Blair High (86.21 percent)
16. Col. Zadok Magruder High (89.59 percent)
17. Springbrook High (87.83 percent)
18. Seneca Valley High (86.21 percent)
19. Rockville High (86.02 percent)
20. Watkins Mill High (84.5 percent)
21. Albert Einstein High (81.93 percent)
22. John F. Kennedy High (81.22 percent)
23. Northwood High (79.36 percent)
24. Gaithersburg High (77.39 percent)
25. Wheaton High (77.36 percent)

Eh, I went to a small rural high school that had a 99.9 percent graduation rate (low FARMS rate too), and something like 90% of us went to college in the fall. So I guess you could say we were a fantastic high school. But then I would also tell you that there were no AP classes, very few kids got to calculus, no National Merit Scholars, I was in honors English classes the entire time and only read one complete novel in four years, few kids did 4 years of foreign languages, there were few specialized courses beyond the basic history, math, English, sciences, we had no rigorous instruction in writing papers, and most of the schools that students headed out to were community colleges or some local branches of the state university system. Very, very few top tier schools, probably 2-3 per class (by which I mean a school like Notre Dame).

So you know, there are different ways of saying how excellent a school is. I'd take my child's amazing high school education at Blair with its 86.21% graduation rate any day over my 99.9% graduation rate high school. It's 10x more rigorous than what I experienced.

Doesn't Whitman have terrible scores these days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How are those graduation rates calculated? If a student is not on diploma track, are they still included in the numbers? LFI, SCB, and Autism are certificate-track programs so any school that houses them (and some have multiple) would take a hit if so. For example, Wheaton has LFI and SCB. Einstein has LFI, SCB, and Extensions. BCC has nothing. Nor does Blair or Poolesville. It wouldn't be a huge hit, but it would be a few percentage points.

What are LFI and SCB?

Learning for Independence and School/Community-Based. They're life skills programs for kids on certificate track.