Fleeing APS schools for FFX County

[Anonymous]

The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

IOW, the vast majority of homebuyers.

Oh well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

IOW, the vast majority of homebuyers.

Oh well.

Sure, but so what? I'm not going to tell my school board to adopt more segregated school zoning to give a marginal boost to my home value while making no actual difference in the school. But you do you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

IOW, the vast majority of homebuyers.

Oh well.

Sure, but so what? I'm not going to tell my school board to adopt more segregated school zoning to give a marginal boost to my home value while making no actual difference in the school. But you do you.

I'm the one upthread who said that school districts don't care to game GS. But all the posters who say that everyone should ignore GS, especially homebuyers, are talking to themselves. Homebuyers care about GS. Rather than telling the school board to change schools, we should call GS and tell them to change their formula. If they took away the single digit overall score, and only provided the individual numbers (with or without fixing the flawed equity number), then homebuyers would be forced to either spend two more seconds looking at more scores per school, or would switch to another metric. SAT scores, possibly?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

IOW, the vast majority of homebuyers.

Oh well.

Sure, but so what? I'm not going to tell my school board to adopt more segregated school zoning to give a marginal boost to my home value while making no actual difference in the school. But you do you.

I'm the one upthread who said that school districts don't care to game GS. But all the posters who say that everyone should ignore GS, especially homebuyers, are talking to themselves. Homebuyers care about GS. Rather than telling the school board to change schools, we should call GS and tell them to change their formula. If they took away the single digit overall score, and only provided the individual numbers (with or without fixing the flawed equity number), then homebuyers would be forced to either spend two more seconds looking at more scores per school, or would switch to another metric. SAT scores, possibly?

All they need to see is the free and reduced lunch rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

IOW, the vast majority of homebuyers.

Oh well.

Sure, but so what? I'm not going to tell my school board to adopt more segregated school zoning to give a marginal boost to my home value while making no actual difference in the school. But you do you.

No need - They already did that in the last Arlington zoning for high schools. Hooray!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The problem is ultimately that GS score is a very blunt tool for assessing a school that in no way tells you how children like yours fare at a given school. That was the case beefore they changed their methodology, and it continues to be the case now. Anyone who takes GS (or any other rating site like Niche or US News) as the beginning and end of a school quality assessment is a fool.

IOW, the vast majority of homebuyers.

Oh well.

Sure, but so what? I'm not going to tell my school board to adopt more segregated school zoning to give a marginal boost to my home value while making no actual difference in the school. But you do you.

I'm the one upthread who said that school districts don't care to game GS. But all the posters who say that everyone should ignore GS, especially homebuyers, are talking to themselves. Homebuyers care about GS. Rather than telling the school board to change schools, we should call GS and tell them to change their formula. If they took away the single digit overall score, and only provided the individual numbers (with or without fixing the flawed equity number), then homebuyers would be forced to either spend two more seconds looking at more scores per school, or would switch to another metric. SAT scores, possibly?

GS will never do that because their whole reason for being is to distill all that data into a single score so lazy homeowners don't have to do their own research. Take that away and all they're doing is reprinting data available elsewhere.

Either way, though that's tangental to this discussion, because this discussion has been about actual school quality, not about how lazy perceptions of school quality affect housing demand. Let's not conflate the two.

[Anonymous]

As far as I've been able to tell, the only metric where APS high schools outperform FCPS high schools is the average number of AP/IB courses taken by graduating seniors. But when you look instead at the percentage of graduates who actually pass the AP or IB exams, the APS schools fall behind the top schools in FCPS (just like they do with average SAT scores, SOL scores, # of National Merit Semifinalists, etc). Maybe that will change by the time the kids redistricted from W-L to YHS graduate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As far as I've been able to tell, the only metric where APS high schools outperform FCPS high schools is the average number of AP/IB courses taken by graduating seniors. But when you look instead at the percentage of graduates who actually pass the AP or IB exams, the APS schools fall behind the top schools in FCPS (just like they do with average SAT scores, SOL scores, # of National Merit Semifinalists, etc). Maybe that will change by the time the kids redistricted from W-L to YHS graduate.

There's that FCPS "only AAP matters" mindset again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As far as I've been able to tell, the only metric where APS high schools outperform FCPS high schools is the average number of AP/IB courses taken by graduating seniors. But when you look instead at the percentage of graduates who actually pass the AP or IB exams, the APS schools fall behind the top schools in FCPS (just like they do with average SAT scores, SOL scores, # of National Merit Semifinalists, etc). Maybe that will change by the time the kids redistricted from W-L to YHS graduate.

There's that FCPS "only AAP matters" mindset again.

AAP in FCPS ends in middle school. Judging from this thread, the "mindset" in APS is to allow economic segregation, and then shrug when the low-income and minority kids do poorly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

Because the gap between Yorktown's high and low performers is larger than the same gap at WS. The low performers may very well be the same at both schools.

It's the other way around. But yes, that's the answer.

Yorktown's performance may also take a hit because some high-achievers leave Yorktown to go to W-L for the IB program. There is no equivalent program that pulls high-achievers to Yorktown from the other HS's.

We can come up with a lot of theories to explain the difference. Another possibility is that FCPS is just better than APS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. Never thought I'd see this many responses, but my takeaway is: FFX uses larger class sizes and the AAP program to manage the potential overcrowding at schools. From everything I've heard in APS over the 4-5 years we've been part of it, there is no way they'd consider tracking and AAP. Seems like a non-starter, for whatever reason. But maybe we're getting to the point where we should consider expanding class sizes. I haven't heard many negative comments about it from FFX parents, seems like it hasn't been all that detrimental to the classroom.

And no surprise we're never going to have as many options as FFX does in terms of finding land to build new schools. They have so much more flexibility in that regard. I wonder if APS needs to at least consider making the 4th HS a combined 6-12 grade school. Perhaps that could open up more options and relieve some of the busing costs? Maybe have the 6-8 grades start at a different time, to stagger the buses? Just throwing out ideas at this point.

APS doesn't do "tracking" but residential housing segregation is essentially the same thing. I bet it would be eyepopping to find out what percentage of students in each elementary school had a preschool education. At a school like Jamestown it's probably well over 90%. At Barcroft or Randolph I'd be very surprised if it cracked 50%. Kids who go to preschool start out ahead (north Arlington) or wait for the others to catch up (south Arlington).

You’re speculating.

Well duh, that's what speculative language like "wouldn't be surprised" implies. Here's another speculation: APS almost certainly has some measure of school readiness for the student body at each elementary school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As far as I've been able to tell, the only metric where APS high schools outperform FCPS high schools is the average number of AP/IB courses taken by graduating seniors. But when you look instead at the percentage of graduates who actually pass the AP or IB exams, the APS schools fall behind the top schools in FCPS (just like they do with average SAT scores, SOL scores, # of National Merit Semifinalists, etc). Maybe that will change by the time the kids redistricted from W-L to YHS graduate.

And there are plenty of FCPS schools that fall behind APS schools. What’s your point?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As far as I've been able to tell, the only metric where APS high schools outperform FCPS high schools is the average number of AP/IB courses taken by graduating seniors. But when you look instead at the percentage of graduates who actually pass the AP or IB exams, the APS schools fall behind the top schools in FCPS (just like they do with average SAT scores, SOL scores, # of National Merit Semifinalists, etc). Maybe that will change by the time the kids redistricted from W-L to YHS graduate.

And there are plenty of FCPS schools that fall behind APS schools. What’s your point?

There is no point, other than some insecure FCPS parents are desperate to establish their own superiority. It's not enough for everyone's schools to be good, they must be the best.

[Anonymous]

So if first is the worst and second is the best, which school system has the hairy chest?