Concerned about buying in WJ cluster because of re-zoning

[Anonymous]

It's myth that white kids score same no matter where they go to school. Bunch of non-sense.

White kids in Kennedy - 1088

White kids in Whitman - 1299

White kids in Einstein - 1148

That's a huge difference for all practical purposes when you apply for college. No I do know that most of this difference comes from resource available to each family.

Anyway, when you pick a HS , you are paying for a peer group. You are simply trying to maximize the chance that peers of your kids are motivated to do well. You can find it in any HS, but chances of your kids not hanging out with unmotivated kids are higher in Whitman than Kennedy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Cliff Notes: White kids at Blair have higher SAT scores than white kids at Wooton, Churchill, Wooten and Poolesville. White kids at WJ are only 100-150 points above white kids at Wheaton and Einstein (which I'm sure can be attributed to class differences more than anything else).

I'd suspected this was true but didn't have hard facts before now.

On a 1600-point scale, a 100-150 point difference is quite significant, whether it's due to test prep, a stronger peer group, or both. No wonder some groups have largely left Wheaton and Einstein.

[Anonymous]

Cliff Notes: White kids at Blair have higher SAT scores than white kids at Wooton, Churchill, Wooten and Poolesville. White kids at WJ are only 100-150 points above white kids at Wheaton and Einstein (which I'm sure can be attributed to class differences more than anything else).

Does Blair also outperform these same schools in all cohorts over 5% too?

[Anonymous]

I think as far as main topic of this thread is concerned, it's clear that test scores in Woodward will fall significantly. You can't take white or one group for that. You have to take everyone in nearby school and extrapolate. Now it doesn't mean that your kid won't get a good education.

Posters are mixing two things here. Test scores will go down and house prices are tied with school's test score. Most buyers look for that.


House prices will fall, but you will get a good education like you get in any MCPS HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Cliff Notes: White kids at Blair have higher SAT scores than white kids at Wooton, Churchill, Wooten and Poolesville. White kids at WJ are only 100-150 points above white kids at Wheaton and Einstein (which I'm sure can be attributed to class differences more than anything else).

I'd suspected this was true but didn't have hard facts before now.

On a 1600-point scale, a 100-150 point difference is quite significant, whether it's due to test prep, a stronger peer group, or both. No wonder some groups have largely left Wheaton and Einstein.

Exactly, Not sure how some posters are saying it's only 100-150 point difference. As if that's a small difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Cliff Notes: White kids at Blair have higher SAT scores than white kids at Wooton, Churchill, Wooten and Poolesville. White kids at WJ are only 100-150 points above white kids at Wheaton and Einstein (which I'm sure can be attributed to class differences more than anything else).

I'd suspected this was true but didn't have hard facts before now.

On a 1600-point scale, a 100-150 point difference is quite significant, whether it's due to test prep, a stronger peer group, or both. No wonder some groups have largely left Wheaton and Einstein.

Exactly, Not sure how some posters are saying it's only 100-150 point difference. As if that's a small difference.

100-150 difference is coming in one cherry picked group. If you take all groups then difference is larger and that's reflected in house price.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Cliff Notes: White kids at Blair have higher SAT scores than white kids at Wooton, Churchill, Wooten and Poolesville. White kids at WJ are only 100-150 points above white kids at Wheaton and Einstein (which I'm sure can be attributed to class differences more than anything else).

Does Blair also outperform these same schools in all cohorts over 5% too?

Now you are asking uncomfortable question.

SAT score for Black kids in Blair - 1032
SAT score for Hispanics in Blair - 1037

WJ or Whitman sat score for the same groups are significantly higher. In short, Blair doesn't outperform.

[Anonymous]

The SAT averages for a single cohort over 5% really illustrates how these schools stack up.

Blair 1326
Churchill 1257
Einstein 1148
Walter Johnson 1275
Wheaton 1173
Wooton 1262

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Whitman's average SAT score - 1289

WJ average SAT score - 1213

Two closest DCC HS likely to send students in WJ/Woodward is Einstein and Wheaton.


Average Wheaton SAT score - 1002

Average Einstein SAT score - 1039

Only using averages is a basic analysis, which only serves to identify which high school draws a higher percentage of rich kids. A better, refined analysis looks at the granular data, and isolates for race and socioeconomic status. When you isolate for race and socioeconomic status there is not much of a disparity between the performance of kids of the same backgrounds in these schools.

For example, let's look at FARMS kids SAT performance (page 10):

WJ = 1013
Einstein = 977
Wheaton = 948

White kids SAT performance (page 8):

WJ = 1275
Einstein = 1148
Wheaton = 1173

There is no way to isolate for race + socioeconomic background, but I would wager that the white kids in Wheaton and Einstein generally are less financially well off, and come from families with fewer graduate degrees than their counterparts at WJ. I also think it's safe to assume the FARMS kids at Einstein and Wheaton are less financially well off relative to the FARMS kids at WJ.

Bottom line: If you're worrying this much about your kids' education and are skewering PDFs of 2017 MoCo SAT scores your kids are going to do well whether they're at WJ, Woodward or Einstein. It doesn't really matter that much, aside from misconceptions of the uniformed general public that don't realize that a child's parents socioeconomic status and education level matter much more to a child's future than what school they go to, especially within the same school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The SAT averages for a single cohort over 5% really illustrates how these schools stack up.

Blair 1326
Churchill 1257
Einstein 1148
Walter Johnson 1275
Wheaton 1173
Wooton 1262

Yes, schools with the <5% (0% to 5%) in a cohort isn't statistically significant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Now you are asking uncomfortable question.

SAT score for Black kids in Blair - 1032
SAT score for Hispanics in Blair - 1037

WJ or Whitman sat score for the same groups are significantly higher. In short, Blair doesn't outperform.

Socioeconomic status matters though. Do you think the black and hispanic kids are richer or poorer than the black and hispanic kids at Blair? That's a rhetorical question, obviously, because Whitman pulls from the richest area in the county.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Now you are asking uncomfortable question.

SAT score for Black kids in Blair - 1032
SAT score for Hispanics in Blair - 1037

WJ or Whitman sat score for the same groups are significantly higher. In short, Blair doesn't outperform.

Socioeconomic status matters though. Do you think the black and hispanic kids are richer or poorer than the black and hispanic kids at Blair? That's a rhetorical question, obviously, because Whitman pulls from the richest area in the county.

I don't doubt it, but since Whitman likely has <5% of these groups (0% to 5%), the data isn't meaningful in this instance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's myth that white kids score same no matter where they go to school. Bunch of non-sense.

White kids in Kennedy - 1088

White kids in Whitman - 1299

White kids in Einstein - 1148

That's a huge difference for all practical purposes when you apply for college. No I do know that most of this difference comes from resource available to each family.

Anyway, when you pick a HS , you are paying for a peer group. You are simply trying to maximize the chance that peers of your kids are motivated to do well. You can find it in any HS, but chances of your kids not hanging out with unmotivated kids are higher in Whitman than Kennedy.

When you're applying to college it's better to be a high performing student in a "poorer" school rather than high performer in a school full of high performers.

Also, you can't say that it's a "huge difference" and in the next sentence say that the difference is probably due to socioeconomic status and the education level of the parents. That makes a tremendous difference, and is born out by multiple studies. I would think that a white kid from a working class background, whose parents both don't have anything beyond a HS diploma, would actually do better at a place like Einstein than Whitman, where they'd feel isolated and suffer from the associated envy and class issues that would come with being a working class white kid going to a school with a bunch of privileged white kids. I'm sure that a middle class white kid, from a two parent, dual-income household, whose parents both had graduate degrees would fare about the same in Einstein and Wheaton as they would at WJ. Point is is that Woodward is going to be fine for these kids. Conversely, hispanic and black kids from low SES families who get transferred from Wheaton and Einstein to Woodward should do better because they'll be around a higher performing peer group. That should be a positive change for everyone involved, no?

As for "paying for a peer group," kids in Luxmanor, who then go to Tilden MS and then to Woodward, are not going to suddenly start hanging out with gangbangers and hustling on the corner just because they're around some other kids from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Woodward is not going to be a scene out of Dangerous Minds, it is going to be 50 to 60 percent well-off kids mixing with middle and lower-middle class kids. The upper-middle class and rich kids from Luxmanor are going to stay in their peer group and maybe, hopefully, be exposed to some kids from other stations in life so that they don't come out of high school with a knee-jerk fear of "others" like their sheltered parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Now you are asking uncomfortable question.

SAT score for Black kids in Blair - 1032
SAT score for Hispanics in Blair - 1037

WJ or Whitman sat score for the same groups are significantly higher. In short, Blair doesn't outperform.

Socioeconomic status matters though. Do you think the black and hispanic kids are richer or poorer than the black and hispanic kids at Blair? That's a rhetorical question, obviously, because Whitman pulls from the richest area in the county.

I don't doubt it, but since Whitman likely has <5% of these groups (0% to 5%), the data isn't meaningful in this instance.

So, basically, the black and hispanic kids in Blair (with a 38% rate of low-income students according to GS) are doing worse on their SATs than black and hispanic kids at Whitman (with a 3% rate of low-income students according to GS). Being that Blair's student population has 12 times more low-income students than Whitman, doesn't it say even more about how overrated Whitman is that black kids at Whitman scored an average of 1169 on the SATs compared to 993 at Einstein and 990 at Wheaton? Shouldn't they be excelling at a much higher rate? Why is Whitman failing these kids when 97% of the school is classified as not being "low-income"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Now you are asking uncomfortable question.

SAT score for Black kids in Blair - 1032
SAT score for Hispanics in Blair - 1037

WJ or Whitman sat score for the same groups are significantly higher. In short, Blair doesn't outperform.

Socioeconomic status matters though. Do you think the black and hispanic kids are richer or poorer than the black and hispanic kids at Blair? That's a rhetorical question, obviously, because Whitman pulls from the richest area in the county.

I don't doubt it, but since Whitman likely has <5% of these groups (0% to 5%), the data isn't meaningful in this instance.

So, basically, the black and hispanic kids in Blair (with a 38% rate of low-income students according to GS) are doing worse on their SATs than black and hispanic kids at Whitman (with a 3% rate of low-income students according to GS). Being that Blair's student population has 12 times more low-income students than Whitman, doesn't it say even more about how overrated Whitman is that black kids at Whitman scored an average of 1169 on the SATs compared to 993 at Einstein and 990 at Wheaton? Shouldn't they be excelling at a much higher rate? Why is Whitman failing these kids when 97% of the school is classified as not being "low-income"?

Since Whitman doesn't have a large enough Black or Hispanic population, a valid comparison can't be made.