Top 10 Schools in MoCo

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV are of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

And how would you assess a school if you want to know about these things? I get that rankings only tell so much but wouldn't one want to know which schools are at the bottom and why they have such low graduation rates for instance? You can't ignore it entirely if you're looking to find a place where your kids will excel.

All schools in MCPS are given the same curriculum and the teachers are not better in one school over other. Maybe it makes sense to compare school systems to see what services are provided by different school systems ( and if they have textbooks or not...but I digress).

How do you assess the school? You assess the school by asking what are the highest level of Math do they allow kids to take at the school? What foreign languages and electives are offered? How many AP courses are taught? Do they have IB or other signature programs? Do they have sports, clubs, activities that your child can participate in? Do they allow your child to start a new club, activity etc if the school does not have that? That is what you need to do. However, if you will look closely, most schools offer similarly rigorous and comparable course offerings to their students.

In HS, good students take harder courses and weak students take easier courses. Unlike ES and MS, there is an automatic differentiation. If school A does better overall than school B, then it is only because school A has more affluent students who are primarily White and Asian American. If school B falls behind then it is mainly because it has less affluent and majority Blacks and Hispanic students. Even though the performance falls among racial lines (Whites and Asians doing well, Blacks and Hispanics doing poorly), the reason is not race but SES. The students who identify as Black or Hispanic and do well academically are usually also from higher SES.

If I am a higher SES student, I can do well in any MCPS HS. Why? Because higher SES students do not rely entirely on MCPS to do well academically. They supplement, they get tutors, they go to test prep centers for SAT prep. As long as the schools are offering rigorous courses to the bright students, most high SES students will do well in any low performing MCPS HS. In fact, some high SES parents prefer that their children go to a low performing HS, so that their children can shine and have a better chance (and story) to get admitted to more selective colleges.

In the end, my kid has to work hard and I have to make sure that they get the support that they need from me. The best of MCPS teachers and magnet program will not be able to meet all the academic needs of my student. A lot of work needs to be done at home by my student and by us - his parents. That is the bottom line.

A large number of students going to W schools supplement at home, they have tutors, they get SAT prep and quite a few will also hire private college counselors. None of them are just getting everything from the school and calling it a day. Therefore, it is ridiculous to rank schools. If you want to have a pissing contest about real estate and home values, that is another story. Bethesda real estate is expensive. Silver Spring and Gaithersburg are not that expensive. But lets not pretend that the schools are better. Schools are same, teachers are same, curriculum is same. Students are different based on their SES and based on how much hard work they put in academically at school and at home.

The colleges are not looking at anything but GPA and SATs first and foremost. I find it ridiculous to preen over the high rank of our HS, if my kid in that HS is not a high achiever and just getting by. Frankly, why would I care if a schoolmate of my child is acing the SATs and the APs while my kid is barely passing?

People need to stop comparing schools. Compare your child with others in MCPS and see what they are doing. What is their GPA? How did they do in their SAT/ACT/SAT subject test/AP/IB? Are they winning state, national and international accolades by winning scholastic and STEM awards etc? No, it is usually someone else's kid who is winning these awards, and then DCUM posters start basking in their reflected glory. People - IT. IS. NOT. YOUR. KID. WHO. IS. WINNING. THESE. ACCOLADES!!!!

If your kid gets into Harvard, gets the National Merit Scholarship, wins the Intel Science competition, wins Teen Jeopardy...please come here and gloat. We will applaud you. But if you want to say that your kid is getting a superior education at the HS, because some students from the same school have made a name for themselves, then you are extremely deluded.

What are you going to do with the high ranking of your HS if you do not plan to sell your home in near future? How does the high rank of your HS benefit your student who is average or below average? It is not as if the colleges admit your student based on the ranking of their schools, right? Colleges look at your student's performance as compared to the applicant pool. I am merely suggesting that DCUM parents take their cues from the admission officers of the top colleges in the country and compare your child with other students in the county, state, nation and don't compare the HS because that is a false comparison, and will lull you in a sense of superiority and entitlement, when in reality your child's academic record need not elicit such feelings.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

And how would you assess a school if you want to know about these things? I get that rankings only tell so much but wouldn't one want to know which schools are at the bottom and why they have such low graduation rates for instance? You can't ignore it entirely if you're looking to find a place where your kids will excel.

+1 I truly do not understand the poster who wants to claim that their low performing school is perfectly fine because a UMC white kid gets a 3 on an AP test and did fine on the SAT after taking the same prep course that a kid in a higher performing school took. If your bar is that low for a school, then sure you will be fine but very other non-delusional parents would view things this way.

The reasons why the kids are performing so far below grade level and not graduating is not really the point. Parents care about how it impacts their child's education. They don't see their own kid as pawn in a system to just bump up scores.

It makes a difference if 30,40, or 50% of your child's classmates are testing 2-3 years below grade level. Would you want your 5th grader in a school where half his class is made up of 2nd and 3rd graders? No, of course not but this is the situation in many MCPS schools.

+1. This. It’s like parents want to believe their kid is an island and the rest of the student body is irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

Also, Stuyvesant is the #4 public HS in America on Niche. The number 1 MD high school on that site--Poolesville--is #30. Given how many high schools there are in the country, statistically anything in at least the top 100 is equivalent, so certainly MD high schools can't be said to "put Stuyvesant to shame."

[Anonymous]

Stuyvescent takes the top performing kids from a district which is an order of magnitude larger than MoCO. It’s apples to turnips

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And how would you assess a school if you want to know about these things? I get that rankings only tell so much but wouldn't one want to know which schools are at the bottom and why they have such low graduation rates for instance? You can't ignore it entirely if you're looking to find a place where your kids will excel.

+1 I truly do not understand the poster who wants to claim that their low performing school is perfectly fine because a UMC white kid gets a 3 on an AP test and did fine on the SAT after taking the same prep course that a kid in a higher performing school took. If your bar is that low for a school, then sure you will be fine but very other non-delusional parents would view things this way.

The reasons why the kids are performing so far below grade level and not graduating is not really the point. Parents care about how it impacts their child's education. They don't see their own kid as pawn in a system to just bump up scores.

It makes a difference if 30,40, or 50% of your child's classmates are testing 2-3 years below grade level. Would you want your 5th grader in a school where half his class is made up of 2nd and 3rd graders? No, of course not but this is the situation in many MCPS schools.

+1. This. It’s like parents want to believe their kid is an island and the rest of the student body is irrelevant.

Yes, there's something to be said about a high achieving environment. My child doesn't have to be in a W school or even in the top 10 but I do want her to be in a school where she will find a big group of kids who care about succeeding and doing academically well. I'm not going to lie but we didn't even consider the schools at the bottom - meaning schools with graduation rates lower than the state avg graduation rate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

The SAT avg for Blair SMACS is around 1530. This is just an average. They consistently win national awards and have students on math and physics olympiads. Blair is the real deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

And how would you assess a school if you want to know about these things? I get that rankings only tell so much but wouldn't one want to know which schools are at the bottom and why they have such low graduation rates for instance? You can't ignore it entirely if you're looking to find a place where your kids will excel.

+1 I truly do not understand the poster who wants to claim that their low performing school is perfectly fine because a UMC white kid gets a 3 on an AP test and did fine on the SAT after taking the same prep course that a kid in a higher performing school took. If your bar is that low for a school, then sure you will be fine but very other non-delusional parents would view things this way.

The reasons why the kids are performing so far below grade level and not graduating is not really the point. Parents care about how it impacts their child's education. They don't see their own kid as pawn in a system to just bump up scores.

It makes a difference if 30,40, or 50% of your child's classmates are testing 2-3 years below grade level. Would you want your 5th grader in a school where half his class is made up of 2nd and 3rd graders? No, of course not but this is the situation in many MCPS schools.

+1. This. It’s like parents want to believe their kid is an island and the rest of the student body is irrelevant.

Yes, there's something to be said about a high achieving environment. My child doesn't have to be in a W school or even in the top 10 but I do want her to be in a school where she will find a big group of kids who care about succeeding and doing academically well. I'm not going to lie but we didn't even consider the schools at the bottom - meaning schools with graduation rates lower than the state avg graduation rate.

I agree. We're not in a W school cluster, but part of the reason we moved to MCPS from DC is that the vast majority of kids at Wilson DCPS weren't meeting basic proficiency standards on reading and math.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

The SAT avg for Blair SMACS is around 1530. This is just an average. They consistently win national awards and have students on math and physics olympiads. Blair is the real deal.

Yes, it's a great program, but you all act like there's nothing equivalent to it in the WMA. That's just not true. Poolesville and TJ are both equivalent on every metric.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

The SAT avg for Blair SMACS is around 1530. This is just an average. They consistently win national awards and have students on math and physics olympiads. Blair is the real deal.

Yes, it's a great program, but you all act like there's nothing equivalent to it in the WMA. That's just not true. Poolesville and TJ are both equivalent on every metric.

It's also great ONLY if your kid is in the SMACS program. The non-SMAC is nothing to really rave about. I think there are many other schools in MCPS that have better scores in multiple metrics than the Blair non-SMAC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

The SAT avg for Blair SMACS is around 1530. This is just an average. They consistently win national awards and have students on math and physics olympiads. Blair is the real deal.

Yes, it's a great program, but you all act like there's nothing equivalent to it in the WMA. That's just not true. Poolesville and TJ are both equivalent on every metric.

It's also great ONLY if your kid is in the SMACS program. The non-SMAC is nothing to really rave about. I think there are many other schools in MCPS that have better scores in multiple metrics than the Blair non-SMAC.

Absolutely true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

All schools in MCPS are given the same curriculum and the teachers are not better in one school over other. Maybe it makes sense to compare school systems to see what services are provided by different school systems ( and if they have textbooks or not...but I digress).

How do you assess the school? You assess the school by asking what are the highest level of Math do they allow kids to take at the school? What foreign languages and electives are offered? How many AP courses are taught? Do they have IB or other signature programs? Do they have sports, clubs, activities that your child can participate in? Do they allow your child to start a new club, activity etc if the school does not have that? That is what you need to do. However, if you will look closely, most schools offer similarly rigorous and comparable course offerings to their students.

In HS, good students take harder courses and weak students take easier courses. Unlike ES and MS, there is an automatic differentiation. If school A does better overall than school B, then it is only because school A has more affluent students who are primarily White and Asian American. If school B falls behind then it is mainly because it has less affluent and majority Blacks and Hispanic students. Even though the performance falls among racial lines (Whites and Asians doing well, Blacks and Hispanics doing poorly), the reason is not race but SES. The students who identify as Black or Hispanic and do well academically are usually also from higher SES.

If I am a higher SES student, I can do well in any MCPS HS. Why? Because higher SES students do not rely entirely on MCPS to do well academically. They supplement, they get tutors, they go to test prep centers for SAT prep. As long as the schools are offering rigorous courses to the bright students, most high SES students will do well in any low performing MCPS HS. In fact, some high SES parents prefer that their children go to a low performing HS, so that their children can shine and have a better chance (and story) to get admitted to more selective colleges.

In the end, my kid has to work hard and I have to make sure that they get the support that they need from me. The best of MCPS teachers and magnet program will not be able to meet all the academic needs of my student. A lot of work needs to be done at home by my student and by us - his parents. That is the bottom line.

A large number of students going to W schools supplement at home, they have tutors, they get SAT prep and quite a few will also hire private college counselors. None of them are just getting everything from the school and calling it a day. Therefore, it is ridiculous to rank schools. If you want to have a pissing contest about real estate and home values, that is another story. Bethesda real estate is expensive. Silver Spring and Gaithersburg are not that expensive. But lets not pretend that the schools are better. Schools are same, teachers are same, curriculum is same. Students are different based on their SES and based on how much hard work they put in academically at school and at home.

The colleges are not looking at anything but GPA and SATs first and foremost. I find it ridiculous to preen over the high rank of our HS, if my kid in that HS is not a high achiever and just getting by. Frankly, why would I care if a schoolmate of my child is acing the SATs and the APs while my kid is barely passing?

People need to stop comparing schools. Compare your child with others in MCPS and see what they are doing. What is their GPA? How did they do in their SAT/ACT/SAT subject test/AP/IB? Are they winning state, national and international accolades by winning scholastic and STEM awards etc? No, it is usually someone else's kid who is winning these awards, and then DCUM posters start basking in their reflected glory. People - IT. IS. NOT. YOUR. KID. WHO. IS. WINNING. THESE. ACCOLADES!!!!

If your kid gets into Harvard, gets the National Merit Scholarship, wins the Intel Science competition, wins Teen Jeopardy...please come here and gloat. We will applaud you. But if you want to say that your kid is getting a superior education at the HS, because some students from the same school have made a name for themselves, then you are extremely deluded.

What are you going to do with the high ranking of your HS if you do not plan to sell your home in near future? How does the high rank of your HS benefit your student who is average or below average? It is not as if the colleges admit your student based on the ranking of their schools, right? Colleges look at your student's performance as compared to the applicant pool. I am merely suggesting that DCUM parents take their cues from the admission officers of the top colleges in the country and compare your child with other students in the county, state, nation and don't compare the HS because that is a false comparison, and will lull you in a sense of superiority and entitlement, when in reality your child's academic record need not elicit such feelings.

OMG. Every single word of this except for hiring a SAT tutor (My kid is using the free Khan Academy tutoring.) and the claim that high performing URM are also high SES. Most (all?) high achieving URM I know are middle class or lower and struggle financially, especially when it comes to college costs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

The SAT avg for Blair SMACS is around 1530. This is just an average. They consistently win national awards and have students on math and physics olympiads. Blair is the real deal.

Yes, it's a great program, but you all act like there's nothing equivalent to it in the WMA. That's just not true. Poolesville and TJ are both equivalent on every metric.

It's also great ONLY if your kid is in the SMACS program. The non-SMAC is nothing to really rave about. I think there are many other schools in MCPS that have better scores in multiple metrics than the Blair non-SMAC.

Absolutely true.

Blair parents act like the school is magnet and magnet light, i went to blair and we almost never interacted with non-magnet kids. There were only so many magnet specific classes but yet we ended up in PE with 95% magnet kids, art with 97% magnet kids and the prerequisites with (you guessed it) mostly magnet/cap kids. Years later I was talking at work and they talked about the major Latino population. I had no idea there so many immigrants at blair. I simply never crossed their paths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Frankly, I do not give a rat's ass about the ranking. Does my kid have a good shot of getting stellar grades, great SAT and AP scores, learning the material, filling content gaps, having excellent EC activities at the end of 4 years? Is he willing to work hard and not depend on MCPS to spoon feed him? Am I willing to support him? Why would I care what the school rating of any other MCPS school is? Why do I care where Joe Shmoe goes? My student is a rising 9th grader in PHS SMACS program - so should he take it easy because by being in PHS he will automagically succeed?

None of the public and private schools in DMV is of the same caliber as Stuyvesant. We should try and concentrate on what is important.

Blair SMACS puts Stuyvesant to shame

I don't get all the Blair SMACS boosters on this forum ... It's a great program, but you all act like it's God gift to man.

The SAT avg for Blair SMACS is around 1530. This is just an average. They consistently win national awards and have students on math and physics olympiads. Blair is the real deal.

Yes, it's a great program, but you all act like there's nothing equivalent to it in the WMA. That's just not true. Poolesville and TJ are both equivalent on every metric.

It's also great ONLY if your kid is in the SMACS program. The non-SMAC is nothing to really rave about. I think there are many other schools in MCPS that have better scores in multiple metrics than the Blair non-SMAC.

Actually that's false. Non-magnet students have access to many magnet level classes. Also as has been shown here the average SAT at Blair for one of the larger cohorts even excluding magnet students was 1296 and surpassed that of the same group at any W.