Fleeing APS schools for FFX County

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Oh, and Yorktown would be a GS 9 because they’d bus out all the poor/minority students.

For my kids, Yorktown is a GS 9. Poor/minority kids aren't hurting their education.

They’re not hurting mine either, sorry my post came across that way. That was a combined criticism of GS’s methodology and the fact that FCPS buses kids who tend not to score as well out of certain schools to give those schools the appearance of being better.

You’re just making stuff up to excuse the poor performance of some kids in APS. FCPS doesn’t do that. In some cases, it buses kids who score higher to certain elementary and middle schools (AAP centers), which improves the average test scores at those schools.

[Anonymous]

The problem with ffx is commute.
We’d be there right now.
Burke is lovely and we could have a much nicer home.
Our commute would suck.
I suspect there will always be families choosing to be close to their jobs. So if APS is hoping people moving to ffx will solve their problems... they might want to rethink it.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. We talk about moving but commuting into DC is a bitch. From where we live in S Arlington it maximizes my time with my family. On some level I kind of hope the projections for the next few years are worse than expected because it seems like only a true actual crisis or federal injunction will force APS and the CB into action.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Agreed. We talk about moving but commuting into DC is a bitch. From where we live in S Arlington it maximizes my time with my family. On some level I kind of hope the projections for the next few years are worse than expected because it seems like only a true actual crisis or federal injunction will force APS and the CB into action.

That's what it seems like. I'm so thankful my kids are in 7th & 9th and we'll be out of the system before it falls off a cliff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.

Whereas APS is moving HB to a site the surrounding neighborhoods rejected as inferior for a neighborhood school (because no one has to send their kid to HB if they don’t like the location) so they could maintain the program while turning the better site into an expanded neighborhood school.

Yes, NIMBYism accounts for part of the problems in APS. But I still doubt the maintenance of a small HB program is a top priority for parents with younger kids now reading about the possibility their kids will attend high school in split shifts.

Don't make assumptions about people you don't know. I have elementary kids who will be in the throes of this if we don't get another high school, and I don't support disbanding the HB program even though my kids have virtually no shot of getting in (assuming they would even want to, my current fourth grader has no interest in applying next year based on what he knows so far.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem with ffx is commute.
We’d be there right now.
Burke is lovely and we could have a much nicer home.
Our commute would suck.
I suspect there will always be families choosing to be close to their jobs. So if APS is hoping people moving to ffx will solve their problems... they might want to rethink it.

This is a bit off topic, but just in case others are thinking about the move: We worried about the commute when we made the move (which we did because we couldn't afford a house in Arlington), but the VRE made the commute fine--you can work en route and it's so predictable. I get all of my email crap cleared up and figure out my to do list, edit reports etc. on the 40min ride. It's turned out to be my super productive time because I'm not interrupted and I think my brain has become trained to work full force for this time period since it's so regular and has a clear cut end. Then I get in a nice few block walk from L'Enfant to my office. It's also nice to have the "I can't stay late, gotta catch the VRE" excuse to leave on-time (which becomes more acceptable when you do the needed work either in the 40 min ride home or the next morning in). Of course this depends on where in DC you work and if your job aligns with the more structured VRE schedule. But in my case, it has helped both my own organization/productivity and also setting limits at work.

[Anonymous]

I've had kids in both systems. FCPS loves rules.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Oh, and Yorktown would be a GS 9 because they’d bus out all the poor/minority students.

For my kids, Yorktown is a GS 9. Poor/minority kids aren't hurting their education.

They’re not hurting mine either, sorry my post came across that way. That was a combined criticism of GS’s methodology and the fact that FCPS buses kids who tend not to score as well out of certain schools to give those schools the appearance of being better.

No worries. Totally agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Oh, and Yorktown would be a GS 9 because they’d bus out all the poor/minority students.

For my kids, Yorktown is a GS 9. Poor/minority kids aren't hurting their education.

How many National Merit Semifinalis has Yorktown had over the past 2-3 years? IIRC, it was quite underwhelming.

Because Yorktown kids aren't going to summer cram schools prior to the fall of junior year. That's a Fairfax thing. My kid didn't prep for PSAT, wasn't a national merit semifinalist, and got 1550+ when it mattered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any school system, FCPS experiences challenges around shifting population bubbles, but as whole I think the larger system gives them more resources to deal with them. People point out disparities between schools in wealthier vs. poorer areas of the county, but if you look at data of similar geographical areas or similarly large school districts, FCPS is quite notable for relative equity--the differences in achievement scores between the lowest 25% of its schools aren't as different from the upper 25% compared to other similarly sized districts (this likely has more to do with the high median income in the county rather than any specific quality of FCPS). I think people are noticing that the inequities are sharpening a bit as resources have gotten stretched thinner.
Having experienced both, I would say that FCPS as a whole is better run than APS as a whole, but individual schools vary.

Correct. If FCPS wasn’t meeting the needs of its lower-income and minority students better, the high schools other than TJ would max out as 5s on Great Schools, just like Yorktown, and more would be 3s and 4s like Wakefield and W-L.

No, the new GS methodology rewards economically segregated schools. It doesn't compare how disadvantaged students are doing to each other, between schools, or as compared to the statewide or system averages. It compares how they are doing relative to the non-disadvantaged students within their schools. So schools with more homogeneously wealthy populations have the highest scores, and schools with a statistically measurable cohort of disadvantaged students had scores that went down. To expect the same outcome from kids who are living completely different lives and being exposed to completely disparate enrichment and vocabulary and experience is absurd. This is completely wrong from an educational standpoint and rewards proficiency rather than growth, which is not a true measure of school performance or excellence. The schools with scores that went down the most were schools where economic disparity amount its students was the greatest, such as Yorktown, where there are a good number of families in the 1%, as well as a statistically significant number of families whose students qualify for fr/l and who live in subsidized housing in Rosslyn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.


Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.

This.
FFX would never have the issues APS has, because as soon as they got too big, they would eliminate the choice programs and they would bus students as needed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.


Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.

This.
FFX would never have the issues APS has, because as soon as they got too big, they would eliminate the choice programs and they would bus students as needed.

Which AAP centers did they disband in order to address overcrowding issues?

[Anonymous]

[Up]

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:






Anonymous wrote:
It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.


Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.





This.
FFX would never have the issues APS has, because as soon as they got too big, they would eliminate the choice programs and they would bus students as needed.


Which AAP centers did they disband in order to address overcrowding issues

?

I don't think they've disbanded any. I'm pretty sure they've just created more Level IV centers at additional schools so that there is less need for busing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like any school system, FCPS experiences challenges around shifting population bubbles, but as whole I think the larger system gives them more resources to deal with them. People point out disparities between schools in wealthier vs. poorer areas of the county, but if you look at data of similar geographical areas or similarly large school districts, FCPS is quite notable for relative equity--the differences in achievement scores between the lowest 25% of its schools aren't as different from the upper 25% compared to other similarly sized districts (this likely has more to do with the high median income in the county rather than any specific quality of FCPS). I think people are noticing that the inequities are sharpening a bit as resources have gotten stretched thinner.
Having experienced both, I would say that FCPS as a whole is better run than APS as a whole, but individual schools vary.

Correct. If FCPS wasn’t meeting the needs of its lower-income and minority students better, the high schools other than TJ would max out as 5s on Great Schools, just like Yorktown, and more would be 3s and 4s like Wakefield and W-L.

No, the new GS methodology rewards economically segregated schools. It doesn't compare how disadvantaged students are doing to each other, between schools, or as compared to the statewide or system averages. It compares how they are doing relative to the non-disadvantaged students within their schools. So schools with more homogeneously wealthy populations have the highest scores, and schools with a statistically measurable cohort of disadvantaged students had scores that went down. To expect the same outcome from kids who are living completely different lives and being exposed to completely disparate enrichment and vocabulary and experience is absurd. This is completely wrong from an educational standpoint and rewards proficiency rather than growth, which is not a true measure of school performance or excellence. The schools with scores that went down the most were schools where economic disparity amount its students was the greatest, such as Yorktown, where there are a good number of families in the 1%, as well as a statistically significant number of families whose students qualify for fr/l and who live in subsidized housing in Rosslyn.

Please. So sick of hearing this.
Yorktown fRL percentage is smaller than other schools that didn’t take the same hit
West Springfield....
As a south Arlington parent you jerks couldn’t shut up at GS rating a few years ago.
Turns out Wakefield has the same outcome for snowflakes as Yorktown...
As far as I’m concerned Great Schools is just as relevant as it’s always been.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
[Up]

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:






Anonymous wrote:
It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.


Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.





This.
FFX would never have the issues APS has, because as soon as they got too big, they would eliminate the choice programs and they would bus students as needed.


Which AAP centers did they disband in order to address overcrowding issues

?

I don't think they've disbanded any. I'm pretty sure they've just created more Level IV centers at additional schools so that there is less need for busing.

Ah, so AAP is untouchable for dealing with overcrowding, and instead it was better to put kids in an office building whose outdoor space was some four-square grids drawn on a blacktop. Got it.