Schools splitting from large ineffective school systems - could the 4 Ws split from MCPS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ive said this here before but Ill say it again. I work in the county and the people at the tippy top are not secretive about their feelings about the W schools. The goal is to narrow the achievement gap, and focusing on enrichment or class size or resources or magnet access in the W schools is inconsistent with that goal. They view it as a moral imperative to level the playing field, and whether or not you agree, there are limited resources. So yes, the W schools are going to remain an afterthought and they're going to let parents do the enriching. Honestly, how could anyone look at the MCPS website and not see this mandate so clearly? It's been this way for YEARS. And by the way, they're also not sending the superstar principals the W schools way either. The good ones in the Ws tend to move up quickly. There are one or two exceptions, but at the high school level only. That's why you see a lot of teacher turnover in the W schools too--lack of good leadership.

It makes you wonder why people pay extra for the privilege of sending their kids to such under-resourced schools with second-rate staff, doesn't it?

because we like our 20 minute commutes to Arlington and downtown DC. plus we enrich our kids' curriculum. plus we both pre-common core C2.0 when there was ability tracking and more teacher curriculum discretion in ES and MS. now the teachers are hamstrung with the slow curriculum and constant practice computer testing. ES really only has three subjects nowadays - the parcc ones - math, reading, english.

Well, then, that's the trade-off. Convenient commutes with lousy "W" schools, or less convenient commutes with better non-"W" schools.

sounds like the issue is only the magnet and HGC are teaching appropriately to intelligent students. the county and C2.0 have been too rigid for W schools to teach advanced materials or methods or stray from C2.0 pacing, scope and online materials.

[Anonymous]

Schools splitting from large ineffective school systems - could the 4 Ws split from MCPS?

LET'S DO IT!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ive said this here before but Ill say it again. I work in the county and the people at the tippy top are not secretive about their feelings about the W schools. The goal is to narrow the achievement gap, and focusing on enrichment or class size or resources or magnet access in the W schools is inconsistent with that goal. They view it as a moral imperative to level the playing field, and whether or not you agree, there are limited resources. So yes, the W schools are going to remain an afterthought and they're going to let parents do the enriching. Honestly, how could anyone look at the MCPS website and not see this mandate so clearly? It's been this way for YEARS. And by the way, they're also not sending the superstar principals the W schools way either. The good ones in the Ws tend to move up quickly. There are one or two exceptions, but at the high school level only. That's why you see a lot of teacher turnover in the W schools too--lack of good leadership.

It makes you wonder why people pay extra for the privilege of sending their kids to such under-resourced schools with second-rate staff, doesn't it?

It's a false narrative that people move to the Ws for schools. They move to the Ws because, generally speaking, they are the districts with easier commutes, safety (as compared to the eastern side of the county where commutes are similar), and proximity to amenities. That is primarily what drives the property value, not the schools. Poolesville has academic performance that's on par with the Ws, and the property value doesn't have any bump. Crown Farm is zoned for a district many people thing is bad and they're having no problem selling $1.5M homes right now. Dufief is zoned for Wootton, yet the outdated homes there can't sell for much.

This notion that there's some huge "W" premium on property values is a mostly a myth.

Agree with you about the principal quality. It is the only way to explain leaving Joan Benz in place for so long. Disagree with you about why people move to a "w" district. That is the number one reason we choose to move to the Churchill area. Did not want to have to worry about potentially having to come up with $80,000 a year for two private school tuition's. Once kids are done with school, there is no reason to stay in the area. Commute and safety were not even close to the reasons we chose to move here. Jobs can change. Not sure why everyone keeps saying so many kids are moving to private schools. In certain areas, like River falls, lots of kids do go to catholic schools. This has been the case for awhile. There are only a limited number of spots for private school so its not like if 1,000 kids wanted to go private there would be spots for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Schools splitting from large ineffective school systems - could the 4 Ws split from MCPS?

LET'S DO IT!!

Maybe you should find out how this would be done, first?

[Anonymous]

It's a false narrative that people move to the Ws for schools. They move to the Ws because, generally speaking, they are the districts with easier commutes, safety (as compared to the eastern side of the county where commutes are similar), and proximity to amenities. That is primarily what drives the property value, not the schools. Poolesville has academic performance that's on par with the Ws, and the property value doesn't have any bump. Crown Farm is zoned for a district many people thing is bad and they're having no problem selling $1.5M homes right now. Dufief is zoned for Wootton, yet the outdated homes there can't sell for much.

From a real estate perspective this isn't true. The test scores still drive real estate value both for outsiders moving into the area and people moving around the area. Even if you don't care about getting a 9 or 10 school, most buyers worry about holding their real estate value so its always safer to buy in a higher ranked school system with lower crime. Dufief is a really good example. For years, Dufief rating was always lower than Travilah and Stonemill right down the road. Dufief has a dedicated special needs learning program and this pulled down its scores so these houses always sold for less. There is still a big difference between a basically identical house in the Wootton cluster and a few streets north in the QO cluster even though QO is a good school. Poolesville is just too far out there so even with great scores its just not practical for two working families.

Crown is having a hard time selling at the prices they are pushing for now. The RIO area is mostly younger people with babies or preschoolers hoping that a new school will save them from the 3 rated Gaithersburg high. No idea if this will pan out.

If you want to make money on your house you buy in DC or VA. If you want to live in Montgomery County and not lose money buy in the W district but don't buy the 1M houses. There just aren't enough people in this area that make that much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's a false narrative that people move to the Ws for schools. They move to the Ws because, generally speaking, they are the districts with easier commutes, safety (as compared to the eastern side of the county where commutes are similar), and proximity to amenities. That is primarily what drives the property value, not the schools. Poolesville has academic performance that's on par with the Ws, and the property value doesn't have any bump. Crown Farm is zoned for a district many people thing is bad and they're having no problem selling $1.5M homes right now. Dufief is zoned for Wootton, yet the outdated homes there can't sell for much.

From a real estate perspective this isn't true. The test scores still drive real estate value both for outsiders moving into the area and people moving around the area. Even if you don't care about getting a 9 or 10 school, most buyers worry about holding their real estate value so its always safer to buy in a higher ranked school system with lower crime. Dufief is a really good example. For years, Dufief rating was always lower than Travilah and Stonemill right down the road. Dufief has a dedicated special needs learning program and this pulled down its scores so these houses always sold for less. There is still a big difference between a basically identical house in the Wootton cluster and a few streets north in the QO cluster even though QO is a good school. Poolesville is just too far out there so even with great scores its just not practical for two working families.

Crown is having a hard time selling at the prices they are pushing for now. The RIO area is mostly younger people with babies or preschoolers hoping that a new school will save them from the 3 rated Gaithersburg high. No idea if this will pan out.

If you want to make money on your house you buy in DC or VA. If you want to live in Montgomery County and not lose money buy in the W district but don't buy the 1M houses. There just aren't enough people in this area that make that much.

My house has more than tripled in price since I bought it..I live in a non-W MoCo area.

[Anonymous]

Ive said this here before but Ill say it again. I work in the county and the people at the tippy top are not secretive about their feelings about the W schools. The goal is to narrow the achievement gap, and focusing on enrichment or class size or resources or magnet access in the W schools is inconsistent with that goal. They view it as a moral imperative to level the playing field, and whether or not you agree, there are limited resources. So yes, the W schools are going to remain an afterthought and they're going to let parents do the enriching. Honestly, how could anyone look at the MCPS website and not see this mandate so clearly? It's been this way for YEARS. And by the way, they're also not sending the superstar principals the W schools way either. The good ones in the Ws tend to move up quickly. There are one or two exceptions, but at the high school level only. That's why you see a lot of teacher turnover in the W schools too--lack of good leadership

I agree with the above statement except a teacher or principal that is loved by the central office and seen as a shining star usually isn't the best. The ones that are loved by the central office tend to be the propaganda kiss ups. The W schools tend to hold onto some of the best teachers who hate 2.0 and really work to get around it. The parents are very active in the W schools so the really horrible teachers tend to get transferred east pretty quickly. There's a practical reality too that many good teachers live up in Frederick so moving east is a nightmare commute for them. They have no intention of moving to the east and sending their kids to the lower ranked schools.

I think its fine that staff in MCPS see improving low performing schools as a moral imperative. This is a good goal. The problem is their complete incompetence in actually achieving that goal. These staff members want to play with numbers to create some illusion of progress that isn't there. Screwing around with the high performing schools isn't helping the lower performing schools at all. Rolling out a bad curriculum isn't helping the lower performing kids. Attracting more whites to the eastern side of the county isn't helping the minority students either. They just get displaced again.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's a false narrative that people move to the Ws for schools. They move to the Ws because, generally speaking, they are the districts with easier commutes, safety (as compared to the eastern side of the county where commutes are similar), and proximity to amenities. That is primarily what drives the property value, not the schools. Poolesville has academic performance that's on par with the Ws, and the property value doesn't have any bump. Crown Farm is zoned for a district many people thing is bad and they're having no problem selling $1.5M homes right now. Dufief is zoned for Wootton, yet the outdated homes there can't sell for much.

From a real estate perspective this isn't true. The test scores still drive real estate value both for outsiders moving into the area and people moving around the area. Even if you don't care about getting a 9 or 10 school, most buyers worry about holding their real estate value so its always safer to buy in a higher ranked school system with lower crime. Dufief is a really good example. For years, Dufief rating was always lower than Travilah and Stonemill right down the road. Dufief has a dedicated special needs learning program and this pulled down its scores so these houses always sold for less. There is still a big difference between a basically identical house in the Wootton cluster and a few streets north in the QO cluster even though QO is a good school. Poolesville is just too far out there so even with great scores its just not practical for two working families.

Crown is having a hard time selling at the prices they are pushing for now. The RIO area is mostly younger people with babies or preschoolers hoping that a new school will save them from the 3 rated Gaithersburg high. No idea if this will pan out.

If you want to make money on your house you buy in DC or VA. If you want to live in Montgomery County and not lose money buy in the W district but don't buy the 1M houses. There just aren't enough people in this area that make that much.

In the last 25 years, Kentlands, Lakelands, King Farm, Park Potomac, Fallsgrove and Crown have all been developed on the fringes of the W clusters, and none of them have had any problems at the sales phase, and all of them have appreciated well over time. During the great recession, most of these neighborhoods were fairly immune to price declines. There are plenty of neighborhoods in Stone Mill, Travilah, Dufier and Fallsmead where comparable homes sell cheaper than ones in the foregoing neighborhoods. At the moment, there are new townhomes selling on Travilah Road, zoned for Wootton, that IIRC sell for about 2/3 of what the same sized townhome goes for in Crown.

There is no question that many buyers want to be in Wootton and Churchill, and will skip or leave open houses if they realize a neighborhood is zoned for RM or QO (particularly a lot of Asian buyers), but it's not really reflected in actual sales prices if you spend a lot of time going to open houses and comparing houses.

If there was a new urbanist development in Wootton or Churchill, there's no doubt that it would be very popular. Instead, buyers right now tend to have to choose in these areas: W cluster or walkable neighborhood with amenities and a town center. My experience is that there are plenty of buyers who prefer one or the other, such that the pricing isn't noticeably different between the two options. There are also plenty of people who prefer clusters like RM because they think Ws are overrated and less diverse (another topic that's hotly debated on DCUM).

[Anonymous]

It makes you wonder why people pay extra for the privilege of sending their kids to such under-resourced schools with second-rate staff, doesn't it?

I don't think the W schools get the worse teachers. We chose to pay a premium to live in a W school after living in DC and SS.

We also talked to friends IRL that were in SS and W schools. Both groups had complaints some the same and some differences. Both groups complained about the curriculum, grading system, MCPS.

SS friends all expressed concern about their schools and didn't share the rosy picture that gets painted here. They complained that there were a handful of engaged parents but most parents don't participate in anything. It wasn't about not giving money but not coming to events, volunteering, helping to fund raise, after school classes would never fill so they would get cancelled. They also complained that the curriculum was too slow and if your child is at grade level you're at the top of the class. Most of the teachers time is spent with disruptive kids and helping kids who aren't prepared. Bullying came up a lot and with boys more physical bullying. They worried about their kids being academically prepared and if they could afford to live in a W school they would have bought there. They were considering less expensive parochial schools for middle and high school.

W friends all expressed concern about the curriculum. All the kids were bored doing basic things. No issues with disruptive kids or the teacher spending time with kids on the bottom but huge classes , bad grading system with no real info and bad curriculum. A big complaint at some of the W schools was capping reading levels. Some schools do and some don't but they felt the ceiling of MCPS holding back strong performers. Bullying came up more in the context of girls and exclusion type behavior. Virtually no complaints about physical bullying at all. They complained that there were so many school activities that they were constantly volunteering or sending a check for something. They didn't worry about their kids not being academically prepared but didn't think they were reaching their potential. If they could afford a top private school for multiple kids they would switch to private.

We ended up choosing the W area. We didn't want to deal with the property crime that we experienced pre-kids in SS and DC. I liked and have been surprised at how safe it is out here. Kids don't have to lock up their bikes and less traffic on the neighborhood roads. We were worried about resale and the W school areas have held their value better than SS. If the W schools get worse, its really because of MCPS pulling more crap but we can always supplement. If the SS schools get worse. its a crime and safety issue and that I have less ability to handle.

[Anonymous]

I am the MCPS teacher who posted earlier. I didn’t say they get worse teachers—they don’t. Teachers go where they want to go as long as the principal wants them. It’s admin that central decides. I agree that the suck ups move up faster, but I know from a good source that they’re definitely not looking to put the strongest administrators in the W schools. And by the way, even the W parents have trouble getting real stinkers of teachers tossed out. Just ask them.

[Anonymous]

Pp again, to clarify, the W schools don’t get worse teachers because that’s not a central office decision. So plenty of good teachers I. The Ws but probably no more so than elsewhere, because like everyone else, teachers don’t want a horrible commute and will try to get a job somewhat close to home, which naturally spreads out the teachers geographically.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

It's a false narrative that people move to the Ws for schools. They move to the Ws because, generally speaking, they are the districts with easier commutes, safety (as compared to the eastern side of the county where commutes are similar), and proximity to amenities. That is primarily what drives the property value, not the schools. Poolesville has academic performance that's on par with the Ws, and the property value doesn't have any bump. Crown Farm is zoned for a district many people thing is bad and they're having no problem selling $1.5M homes right now. Dufief is zoned for Wootton, yet the outdated homes there can't sell for much.

From a real estate perspective this isn't true. The test scores still drive real estate value both for outsiders moving into the area and people moving around the area. Even if you don't care about getting a 9 or 10 school, most buyers worry about holding their real estate value so its always safer to buy in a higher ranked school system with lower crime. Dufief is a really good example. For years, Dufief rating was always lower than Travilah and Stonemill right down the road. Dufief has a dedicated special needs learning program and this pulled down its scores so these houses always sold for less. There is still a big difference between a basically identical house in the Wootton cluster and a few streets north in the QO cluster even though QO is a good school. Poolesville is just too far out there so even with great scores its just not practical for two working families.

Crown is having a hard time selling at the prices they are pushing for now. The RIO area is mostly younger people with babies or preschoolers hoping that a new school will save them from the 3 rated Gaithersburg high. No idea if this will pan out.

If you want to make money on your house you buy in DC or VA. If you want to live in Montgomery County and not lose money buy in the W district but don't buy the 1M houses. There just aren't enough people in this area that make that much.

My house has more than tripled in price since I bought it..I live in a non-W MoCo area.

It happens all over.

W area inside the beltway. Our former $300k house now sells for $900k. On my new street, $890k is a teardown. It's all relative.

[Anonymous]

In Nassau County Long Island each town has own school district and own school taxes. The County level a portion of RE taxes goes to that and no Nassau County income tax.

Montgomery county has a sucky system as I pay Montgomery county taxes on my income and out of property tax - double taxation. Also I have no say in setting school district boundary lines or anything. It devalues better areas.

[Anonymous]

W School parent here. Believe me we have some crappy, incompetent teachers too, at all levels. Good principals figure out how to get rid of them, the bad ones we're just stuck with (the bad principals and the bad teachers). We also have disruptive students, very disruptive. Mcps has not figured out how to deal with this and it sucks for all ( those that are being disrupted, and the disruptor). As far as the curriculum, at any mcps school, if your kid is on grade-level, or heaven forbid above grade level and not in a magnet, they're bored out of their mind in ES and on ME except for math and foreign language.

And in our W schools, the class sizes are so big, and the range of abilities so large, that there is very little, if any, differentiation happening. Bad behavior and lower end students get the attention, and the rest play on their chrome books.

[Anonymous]

Disruptive kids often have ADD, hyperactivity, dislexia, bad home situations etc. Not like teacher can do much.

I recall my 15 year old self was being a trouble maker and the school called my Mom down. My Mom said you got him 7 hours a day I got him 17 hours a day want to switch. Otherwise just do your job and don't bother me again. Teachers, guidance counselers, principals it is tough. They all want perfect little angels with A averages but public schools don't get to pick and choose