Student Achievement at FCPS Title I Schools

[Anonymous]

We are at a school that is about 55% FARMS and it has been great. Maybe it is our school or the families we have had the pleasure of knowing but the teachers are great and well educated, the classes are small, and most of the parents (including the FARMS ones) are very involved. My daughter has met or exceeded all benchmarks and it isn't because she is a genius who can teach herself without adequate instruction or anything like that.

[Anonymous]

Those rates are probably inflated at many schools.

[Anonymous]

I think it depends on your Title1 school. In mine there seemed to be very low expectations. No homework was assigned because the reality was that nobody would do it. So my question is when do you start having expectations for students? 4th grade or finally 7th grade? My upper elementary kids are expected to read books at home and come back with responses for the next class, study for tests, manage multiple assignments, etc, for example. In middle school, they're going to have to do that anyway, so when does the elementary school start preparing for that? Having no homework is convenient, but I don't think it sets expectations of what's to come.

[Anonymous]

Those were the expectations back when I was in public school years ago. Why the change (for Title 1)?

[Anonymous]

My kids are at a Title 1 ES and have/had homework every night. Typically reading every night, including weekends, and math each weeknight. Also, occasionally studying for tests or doing projects for math, English or Social Studies.

[Anonymous]

FCPS is so site specific it's impossible to figure out what a particular school might be like down to details. I do think that the FARMS rate affects whether people move to an area and often this is already predetermined by the housing around the school and the school boundary. The school with a very high FARMS rate needs to be stellar for people to overlook the rate and buy property in that boundary and reduce the rate of FARMS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are at a Title 1 ES and have/had homework every night. Typically reading every night, including weekends, and math each weeknight. Also, occasionally studying for tests or doing projects for math, English or Social Studies.

This is very different from our experience at our Title1 ES. Glad yours is for the better. Our experience reminded me of the article I read about some DC public school students who graduated with top grades, thinking they were doing really well, only to get slapped in the face when they got to college. They found that they were woefully unprepared for the rigors of college. I feared that would happen with our kids in a school with lower expectations and few around them reaching for the stars.

[Anonymous]

I have zero concern that my kids won't be prepared for college or that the vast majority of their classmates won't be either. Their MS has roughly 60% FARMs and ESOL but has at least 76% passing the SOLs (including quite a few with perfect scores on at least some of the tests). So, let's say there are 1,000 kids in the MS. That means there are 760 passing each test at a minimum. If we assume that all non-FARMs passed (an assumption, not a given), then that means there are 400 non-FARMs and 360 FARMs/ESOL kids who also passed. 100% pass rate for non-FARMs/non-ESOL would be fantastic. And if 360 of 600 FARMs/ESOL also pass (60%), that's no small feat either since many of these kids have parents who speak no English, can't help their kids with their schoolwork, and can't afford tutoring or test prep classes. In reality, not 100% of the non-FARMs kids pass, which means that the percentage of FARMs/ESOL kids passing is actually higher than 60%. And when you factor in that many of the "non-FARMs" kids at this school are probably barely above that money line, that makes these schools all the more impressive.

[Anonymous]

It's funny to me that most parents are more concerned with middle and high school
In middle and high school you are tracked. Elementary school is the most important.
Parent of a high performing elementary school in an average middle and high school pyramid

[Anonymous]

"It's funny to me that most parents are more concerned with middle and high school
In middle and high school you are tracked. Elementary school is the most important.
Parent of a high performing elementary school in an average middle and high school pyramid "

It's because I went to a city ES and MS and my mom taught in a city HS. In ES it was ok since kids were mostly nice & not too bad - at my ES at least we had grade level groupings of higher and lower paced classes so that helped too (that's not allowed now some places).

In MS there were fights. Lots of them. Kids punching teachers; regular occurrence on bus, etc. Pregnant 8th graders. Although classes were still grouped, we were together for lunch, PE, bus rides - certainly enough time to be really cognizant that you needed to be on guard against kids from the other classes. It's not the academics necessarily - it's the social environment. Your kid does not operate in a bubble in MS & HS even if they are taking advanced classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's funny to me that most parents are more concerned with middle and high school
In middle and high school you are tracked. Elementary school is the most important.
Parent of a high performing elementary school in an average middle and high school pyramid

Could you please elaborate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:40% is the sweet spot IMO. If I had my way we would bus kids as far as it took, to make sure no school had above 40% FARMS.

The problem with that is that you would constantly have to do boundary adjustments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"It's funny to me that most parents are more concerned with middle and high school
In middle and high school you are tracked. Elementary school is the most important.
Parent of a high performing elementary school in an average middle and high school pyramid "

It's because I went to a city ES and MS and my mom taught in a city HS. In ES it was ok since kids were mostly nice & not too bad - at my ES at least we had grade level groupings of higher and lower paced classes so that helped too (that's not allowed now some places).

In MS there were fights. Lots of them. Kids punching teachers; regular occurrence on bus, etc. Pregnant 8th graders. Although classes were still grouped, we were together for lunch, PE, bus rides - certainly enough time to be really cognizant that you needed to be on guard against kids from the other classes. It's not the academics necessarily - it's the social environment. Your kid does not operate in a bubble in MS & HS even if they are taking advanced classes.

But that's good training for the real world. The real world is a diverse place.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS is so site specific it's impossible to figure out what a particular school might be like down to details. I do think that the FARMS rate affects whether people move to an area and often this is already predetermined by the housing around the school and the school boundary. The school with a very high FARMS rate needs to be stellar for people to overlook the rate and buy property in that boundary and reduce the rate of FARMS.

Correct. It needs to become a magnet school. This has worked well in other places.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To all posters what is happening in OP elementary school is happening in countless schools

Again for me the solution is people shouldn't give up on their neighborhood school. Get rid of AAP and boundary exceptions etc.

Otherwise we are on a crash course for a North South County Arlington situation. Where about half of the clusters are great and the other half all the "higher quality" people are pulled out

ask yourself this question what happens to the "leftover kids" who end up with lower employment, lower SES, more crime, etc. That's right "we" all do with higher taxes and the cycle goes to the next generation.

+1 Well said. So sick of AAP and boundary loopholes. It's making things so much worse.