DCC residents - what are your plans for high school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you have young kids, I would buy in one of the Wheaton or Einstein neighborhoods that have a good chance of being re-zoned into Woodward when it opens. This could give you a very nice bump in equity to put toward college.

This potentially very lucrative advice.

[Anonymous]

Within the DCC people do choose living in Blair instead of other schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have young kids, I would buy in one of the Wheaton or Einstein neighborhoods that have a good chance of being re-zoned into Woodward when it opens. This could give you a very nice bump in equity to put toward college.

This potentially very lucrative advice.

i.e. Viers Mill ES or possibly contiguous schools. The thing is, you won't know for sure until 2021/22 at the earliest, when they decide the new boundaries. There's a 40-page thread about this on the Real Estate forum.

[Anonymous]

Within the DCC people do choose living in Blair instead of other schools.

This is true but its a mistake. Just because Blair is rated a 6 instead of a 4 doesn't mean that it is any better than the other DCC schools. I was not surprised to see the long term sexual harassment problems in the STEM program being swept under the rug for years at Blair. There is too much focus on trying to look good and hide problems. The large portion of kids that don't do well at Blair get ignored while all the focus is on the magnet kids who are pretty much out of boundary. It is very much a emperor has no clothes type of school but as long as it has the magnet program and out of boundary top students, its scores will mask the real problems.

I'm not saying that there aren't problems at Einstein, Northwood, Wheaton or Kennedy but the core focus is on the general program not special snowflakes from other zones. The other DCC schools seem to have a sense of pride in what they do. Blair seems to have a chip on its shoulder that its ranked below the Poolesville magnet program and W schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you have young kids, I would buy in one of the Wheaton or Einstein neighborhoods that have a good chance of being re-zoned into Woodward when it opens. This could give you a very nice bump in equity to put toward college.

This potentially very lucrative advice.

i.e. Viers Mill ES or possibly contiguous schools. The thing is, you won't know for sure until 2021/22 at the earliest, when they decide the new boundaries. There's a 40-page thread about this on the Real Estate forum.

If it doesn't work out you're assigned to either Wheaton or Einstei, both great schools ( I say this with authority because I have kids at both schools). It's a win-win.

[Anonymous]

What are our plans for HS? Lots of tutors and at home supplementing plus strong organizational skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
20:12 - something is very wrong with your scores. You inflated Blair, deflated Churchill, and slightly inflated Wheaton.

Here are the SAT scores available at Niche.com

Churchill 1330
Blair 1270
Einstein and Wheaton 1150


The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/shareda...c_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

Except the data doesn't show that kids do the same. As a PP pointed out AA students do better at Churchill than Blair. I also still didn't see the numbers that the PP is posting and can't figure out how she got them. Did she only include Asian students in the magnet program for Blair and then remove the Asian students from Churchill? Weird.

Regardless, the PP's maneuvering doesn't particularly help the DCC schools. Every other source available will report the actual average which has schools like Churchill and Wootton up in the 1300s and Blair in the 1200s with Wheaton/Einstein in the mid 1100s. No parent is going to rifle through internal MCPS data to cherry pick certain scores and come to the conclusion that somehow Blair is better. Every ranking from US News to Niche to Great Schools has the DCC schools in the middle to bottom. It just is what it is.

Asian and white students do better at Blair than any W schools. Blair has more academic achievements than all the W schools combined, and it's not even close. Blair is nationally known while the W's are not (well except on paper).
It just is what it is.

Lol nobody talks about Blair but Blair parents and magnet rejects faces with a marginal home school. Nobody buys to be in the Blair zone who can afford better.

But we know for sure that W parents do talk about Blair. They are obsessed with it.
You are talking about Blair.
LOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Within the DCC people do choose living in Blair instead of other schools.

This is true but its a mistake. Just because Blair is rated a 6 instead of a 4 doesn't mean that it is any better than the other DCC schools. I was not surprised to see the long term sexual harassment problems in the STEM program being swept under the rug for years at Blair. There is too much focus on trying to look good and hide problems. The large portion of kids that don't do well at Blair get ignored while all the focus is on the magnet kids who are pretty much out of boundary. It is very much a emperor has no clothes type of school but as long as it has the magnet program and out of boundary top students, its scores will mask the real problems.

I'm not saying that there aren't problems at Einstein, Northwood, Wheaton or Kennedy but the core focus is on the general program not special snowflakes from other zones. The other DCC schools seem to have a sense of pride in what they do. Blair seems to have a chip on its shoulder that its ranked below the Poolesville magnet program and W schools.

Blair doesn't worry about rankings on paper, it worries about on the field performances, which the W's and Poolesville combined, cannot match.
Again, W parent talking, obsessing about Blair.

[Anonymous]

My kids are currently in elementary school at a CES that in near Blair. At a PTA meeting, there was a discussion that it is now very difficult to be placed into Blair if you are not already living in the Blair zone (other than acceptance to a magnet) because almost everyone wants to go to Blair. They also expect it to get even worse as Blair overcrowding (and overcrowding in general) increases. Most of the parents at the meeting weren't worried because they're already living the in Blair area, but those of us with kids bused in from another area for the CES magnet definitely were concerned.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:20:12 - something is very wrong with your scores. You inflated Blair, deflated Churchill, and slightly inflated Wheaton.

Here are the SAT scores available at Niche.com

Churchill 1330
Blair 1270
Einstein and Wheaton 1150

The PP's intent was to look past simple averages that GS uses which serve only to identify which high-schools draw a higher percentage of rich kids., and provide a better, refined analysis that looks at the granular data.

When you isolate for race which is proxy a for socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds across these schools.

For example, when you compare average SAT scores for MCPS schools for a larger demographic common to all these schools the great schools narrative begins to fall apart and it becomes clear they're not all that different.

Blair 1326
Walter Johnson 1275
Wooton 1262
Churchill 1257
Wheaton 1173
Einstein 1148

The data is for the largest cohort common to the aforementioned schools on page 10.
http://montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/sharedaccountability/reports/2017/1771102HS%20Princ_SAT%20Partic_Perf%20Class%20of%202017.pdf

I've suspected the same kid would do more or less the same at any of these schools too, but your analysis underscores this for me. Unfortunately, this won't go over well with people who paid big bucks to live in the segregated areas.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are currently in elementary school at a CES that in near Blair. At a PTA meeting, there was a discussion that it is now very difficult to be placed into Blair if you are not already living in the Blair zone (other than acceptance to a magnet) because almost everyone wants to go to Blair. They also expect it to get even worse as Blair overcrowding (and overcrowding in general) increases. Most of the parents at the meeting weren't worried because they're already living the in Blair area, but those of us with kids bused in from another area for the CES magnet definitely were concerned.

It has been extremely difficult to get into Blair through the lottery for many years. That is not new. But Einstein and Wheaton are becoming a lot of people's top choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are currently in elementary school at a CES that in near Blair. At a PTA meeting, there was a discussion that it is now very difficult to be placed into Blair if you are not already living in the Blair zone (other than acceptance to a magnet) because almost everyone wants to go to Blair. They also expect it to get even worse as Blair overcrowding (and overcrowding in general) increases. Most of the parents at the meeting weren't worried because they're already living the in Blair area, but those of us with kids bused in from another area for the CES magnet definitely were concerned.

Your home address determined which CES you were assigned to; it also determines your high school base area. But the fact that that CES is within a particular base area is irrelevant, because regional CES centers all serve more than one high school cluster. If you want your kids to go to Blair, you'll need to move into the Blair zone (which may change by the time your kids are in HS), or they'll need to be accepted into a magnet program there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids are currently in elementary school at a CES that in near Blair. At a PTA meeting, there was a discussion that it is now very difficult to be placed into Blair if you are not already living in the Blair zone (other than acceptance to a magnet) because almost everyone wants to go to Blair. They also expect it to get even worse as Blair overcrowding (and overcrowding in general) increases. Most of the parents at the meeting weren't worried because they're already living the in Blair area, but those of us with kids bused in from another area for the CES magnet definitely were concerned.

Your home address determined which CES you were assigned to; it also determines your high school base area. But the fact that that CES is within a particular base area is irrelevant, because regional CES centers all serve more than one high school cluster. If you want your kids to go to Blair, you'll need to move into the Blair zone (which may change by the time your kids are in HS), or they'll need to be accepted into a magnet program there.

This is not entirely true. If you want a guarantee of attending Blair, then live in-bounds, but kids do get into Blair from outside the boundary through the DCC lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kids are currently in elementary school at a CES that in near Blair. At a PTA meeting, there was a discussion that it is now very difficult to be placed into Blair if you are not already living in the Blair zone (other than acceptance to a magnet) because almost everyone wants to go to Blair. They also expect it to get even worse as Blair overcrowding (and overcrowding in general) increases. Most of the parents at the meeting weren't worried because they're already living the in Blair area, but those of us with kids bused in from another area for the CES magnet definitely were concerned.

Your home address determined which CES you were assigned to; it also determines your high school base area. But the fact that that CES is within a particular base area is irrelevant, because regional CES centers all serve more than one high school cluster. If you want your kids to go to Blair, you'll need to move into the Blair zone (which may change by the time your kids are in HS), or they'll need to be accepted into a magnet program there.

This is not entirely true. If you want a guarantee of attending Blair, then live in-bounds, but kids do get into Blair from outside the boundary through the DCC lottery.

But it's essentially true. The Metis report said only 5% of students from outside of Blair's base area were assigned there through the lottery. And that was four years ago, when Blair wasn't considered over capacity, as it is now.

[Anonymous]

I know this thread is a couple of months old, but the Blair open house is tonight. We're not zoned for Blair, but kid really wants to go there. Currently thinks our zoned high school is third choice. Will they basically be throwing away a choice if they list Blair first on the lottery form?