Best elementary school for a STEM gifted child?
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Anonymous
Yes, it indicates a similarly affluent individual scores 30-50 points higher at Blair than a W which isn't especially significant. |
Anonymous
Wootton isn’t really a W, the want to be but they don’t really hit all the prerequisites |
Anonymous
Not like I'm an expert but I remember Wooton as one of the better schools MCPS. |
Anonymous
Blair whole average for 2018 is 1318, as shown previously What’s Wootton 2018 score ? |
Anonymous
The earlier poster's more granular analysis seems on point. There is a demonstrable link between SES and test score performance. By comparing how similar SES groups perform is a better indicator of how any student would perform at either school. Nevertheless, Wooton and all the other W's typically are in the range of 1250 - 1270 in years past. |
Anonymous
Which year did MCPS start offering free a SAT round to all Juniors. This probably explains the participation jump as kids that might have taken the ACT took advantage of the free test. |
Anonymous
Don't know. No reports yet. The 1318 from Blair shown in PP is a big jump (also the 80% testing rate) from any of the previous years reported by MCPS. Either a big change for students of class 2018, or they use a different way to get the data. We'll wait for data from MCPS to come out that uses same method on all schools. |
Anonymous
And Blair's typically below 1200 in years past. So the "1318" is likely a change in how they calculate it. |
Anonymous
1326 you mean 
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Anonymous
| What science and stem classes are offered at MCPS for k-5? |
Anonymous
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We went back and forth between buying in Blair vs buying in Wootton. Both TPMS-magnet/Blair-magnet and RF/CJ/Wootton are the best schools for STEM oriented kids but there are pros and cons to each.
We ultimately chose the Wootton area because DH did not want to raise kids in the areas that we saw around Blair. Property crime, other crime, run down properties, vagrancy and loitering, houses that needed tons of work, generally scrubby looking area etc. Since we worked in VA and the western side of DC, the Blair area wasn't faster for a commute. Neither of us wanted to to take the risk on one of our kids ending up in the non-magnet part of TPMS or Blair. For TPMS/Blair magnets there is always the risk of what do you do if don't get in. We also talked to co-workers who lived in the area and they ended up in private schools. I have to meet anyone IRL who recommends the non-magnet portion of TPMS or Blair and we have actually known quite a few families who live or lived in the area. Everyone that we met IRL that was in Wootton raved about it. Plus if you go with Wootton you still have options to go to the Blair or Poolesville magnets or stay at Wootton which is also great for STEM kids. The only downside is that if your kid wants to go to one of the magnets its a long bus ride. It used to be a downside that you could only get advanced instruction at the middle school level going to TPMS which is another long bus ride but now that they have watered down the TPMS program and added the gifted/magnet math and humanities class to RF and CJ, TPMS isn't as attractive for STEM kids in the west. While I do think its wrong that MCPS changed the admissions to discriminate against asian american students, the upside is that the top STEM kids are now staying at RF and CJ with new advanced classes. |
Anonymous
LOL When did they water down the TPMS program ? ?? When did they add magnet math and humanities to RF and CJ???? The rest of your post is as bogus |
Anonymous
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Let's get focused on the topic rather than being carried away, blindly comparing Blair and other good HS.
The reason for the discussion is to choose the best ES for a STEM kid. There are two approaches: 1. choose the best ES that the child can more easily go into a magnet MS (or magnet HS). 2. choose the best ES that if the child fails to get into a magnet MS, the MS and then the HS would be strong in STEM. For 1, we compare the ES directly. For 2, we compare the MS and HS (the non-magnet part - because the magnet part is not something a child gets into by just living there) Here we only focus on 2. So let's gather up the facts and see where they lead to. Facts: (1) In the previous years (up to class 2017), Blair students do reasonably good in SAT. Their average SAT is in the range of 1100 to 1200 (if using reading+math). The Ws are typically somewhat above 1200. There is a 50 to 100 points gap between Blair and the Ws. If we choose Wootton as an example: 2017: Blair 1142, Wootton: 1230, 2016: Blair 1162, Wootton 1232 ... This is based on data from MCPS schools at a glance: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/glance/ (2) For class 2018, only data from Blair is available from Blair's website as PP mentioned: 1318. No data for Ws are available. https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A544d3cea-590a-4234-8efa-69b2be579481 (3) demographic information is available in 2017: https://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2017/1771102HS%20Princ_SAT%20Partic_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf This is actually also available in 2018 but the MCPS did not give the scores in their 2018 report so we can't use that. Here if you only look at the average SAT from various ethnic groups, it appears that Blair is dong better for some groups, worse for some, and similar for some too, compared with the Ws' For example: White: Blair 1326, Wootton: 1262, Asian: Blair 1290, Wootton: 1278, Black: Blair 1032, Wootton 986, Hispanic: Blair 1037, Wootton 1143. Now done with the facts, note that (i) the scores from Blair include the magnet part. For comparisons like national honors etc, the magnet program contributes to a significant portion in Blair and can't be ignored. For example among the 45 National Merit Semifinalists, we can sort of guess how many are from the magnetic program so the non-magnet part is not really doing that great. For SAT this is not significant due to the large base. 200 more points in average from the magnet students, would only result in less than 40 points higher in the total average for Blair. so let's not worry too much about that. (ii) (1) and (3) are consistent (they are both MCPS data). If you use data in (3) and multiply the SAT average of each group to the correct ratio in student population, you get the data reported in (1) Conclusions: 1. If you compare the average SAT, Blair is somewhat at a lower level compared to the Ws. This is typically how people judge whether a school is better or worse. Of course, some people may have their own definitions of a "better" school. The data from Blair class 2018 has no other school data to compare with, and appears as an outliner even in data from Blair's previous years SAT. We need to understand whether that is due to a different way of calculating the average or a real boost in the 2018 class. 2. If you just compare the same ethnic group, apparently other than Hispanics, Blair is doing better or at least the same (compared to, e.g. Wootton). That could mean Blair teachers are doing a great job so they should be awarded by the district for making the "high performing" group perform even better. And of course people can emphasize that Blair's average SAT is lower than the W's only because unfortunately it gets more low-performing students. So people can make their own judgement: do you want to go to a school where students in average is doing better, or do you want to choose a school where the "ethnic group" your kid belongs to is doing better. Some people may think neither matters that much. Some people may emphasize one of the two. These are perfectly fine. Just use the facts and think for yourself. |
Anonymous
So what if a similar SES non-magnet cohort at Blair outperforms students at any random W. Big deal. Nobody cares. I prefer to include the lower SES groups even though it has little impact on outcomes because it justifies my real-estate value. |
Anonymous
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For ES, I would say the Wootton cluster hands on. STEM is largely ignored throughout the MCPS curriculum so you have to rely on cohort and outside activities. The Wootton area is much nerdier than the Blair area and lots of families do STEM oriented after school activities and camps just for fun. Your kid will easily have a large group of peers who enjoy STEM.
For MS, its a good point that with the TPMS magnet curriculum being "adjusted" to support a greater range of ability, the smart students staying back in the Ws and the additional GT/magnet classes at the MS that TPMS is no longer better than RF or CJ. To the extent that scheduling allows both CJ and RF try to group by cohort in the advanced classes. As there are more high performing students in these area, the high cohort class ends up have higher performing students now than the TPMS magnet. |