Lewis HS: Is it really that bad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'll put the lede right up front for you: no, Lewis is not that bad. Yes, your kid can get a good education and a wonderful high school experience there.

Pros of Lewis:
- The teachers and administration. Hands down the best teachers and administration we've experienced in FCPS. This is where the school's small size comes into play, as the teachers really get to know their students, with smaller class sizes and fewer kids overall. Teachers do not go easy on their students, but they will reach out to parents if they see students struggling or if coursework is missing. The teachers really want their kids to succeed.

- More opportunities for participation. Be it sports or drama or music, there are more chances for your kid to join in. Several talented freshmen took to the stage in starring roles in the spring musical last year. The marching band encourages its players to take on leadership roles. The sports teams aren't the best, but those kids get out there and work hard. And your kid will most likely make the sports team. All of those things will look great when applying to colleges.

Negatives of Lewis:
- The size. It's both a pro and a con, as the smaller size means less of a population to draw from for donations, for parent participation. It's hard getting volunteers. Many parents don't speak English, and it can be a struggle to navigate the school environment, but I will say that those parents still want their kids to succeed.


I think a big worry parents have about going to Lewis is whether the large ESOL population holds more advanced students back, or even regular students back, and I will say no. My kid's getting pass-advanced on tests, and I'm not doing any supplemental work. My child's not the only one doing well there.

The test scores look bad, yes, but again, remember that Lewis has one of the highest ESOL populations of schools. It's not easy doing standardized testing in another language. Those scores do not reflect the hard work and dedication of the teachers, but rather, the challenges of an international student population.

The school also has some of the nicest, most hardworking kids I've encountered. They're the ones who hold the door for you and notice when someone enters the room and needs a chair. My kid went to a different, larger middle school, and my kid has said many times that they feel safer walking the hallways of Lewis than at the other school.

Ultimately, I realize this won't change the minds of people. I wish people would just walk the halls or meet the community before forming conclusions. I'm also aware that right next door to Lewis, there's a school pyramid that had a drug overdose death earlier this school year and has problems with middle schoolers rampaging through the shopping centers, which people have rather shrugged away. Apparently test scores mean more? All schools can have problems. But Lewis has already been painted negatively, and it's like those medieval paintings done by some monk who's obviously never seen a lion. Whatever picture folks have painted off Lewis, let me tell you, it's really far off.

Maybe you should try modeling for your kids and painting a better picture of Lewis without tearing others down?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll put the lede right up front for you: no, Lewis is not that bad. Yes, your kid can get a good education and a wonderful high school experience there.

Pros of Lewis:
- The teachers and administration. Hands down the best teachers and administration we've experienced in FCPS. This is where the school's small size comes into play, as the teachers really get to know their students, with smaller class sizes and fewer kids overall. Teachers do not go easy on their students, but they will reach out to parents if they see students struggling or if coursework is missing. The teachers really want their kids to succeed.

- More opportunities for participation. Be it sports or drama or music, there are more chances for your kid to join in. Several talented freshmen took to the stage in starring roles in the spring musical last year. The marching band encourages its players to take on leadership roles. The sports teams aren't the best, but those kids get out there and work hard. And your kid will most likely make the sports team. All of those things will look great when applying to colleges.

Negatives of Lewis:
- The size. It's both a pro and a con, as the smaller size means less of a population to draw from for donations, for parent participation. It's hard getting volunteers. Many parents don't speak English, and it can be a struggle to navigate the school environment, but I will say that those parents still want their kids to succeed.


I think a big worry parents have about going to Lewis is whether the large ESOL population holds more advanced students back, or even regular students back, and I will say no. My kid's getting pass-advanced on tests, and I'm not doing any supplemental work. My child's not the only one doing well there.

The test scores look bad, yes, but again, remember that Lewis has one of the highest ESOL populations of schools. It's not easy doing standardized testing in another language. Those scores do not reflect the hard work and dedication of the teachers, but rather, the challenges of an international student population.

The school also has some of the nicest, most hardworking kids I've encountered. They're the ones who hold the door for you and notice when someone enters the room and needs a chair. My kid went to a different, larger middle school, and my kid has said many times that they feel safer walking the hallways of Lewis than at the other school.

Ultimately, I realize this won't change the minds of people. I wish people would just walk the halls or meet the community before forming conclusions. I'm also aware that right next door to Lewis, there's a school pyramid that had a drug overdose death earlier this school year and has problems with middle schoolers rampaging through the shopping centers, which people have rather shrugged away. Apparently test scores mean more? All schools can have problems. But Lewis has already been painted negatively, and it's like those medieval paintings done by some monk who's obviously never seen a lion. Whatever picture folks have painted off Lewis, let me tell you, it's really far off.

Maybe you should try modeling for your kids and painting a better picture of Lewis without tearing others down?

Hmmm, well, bless your heart, this post didn't seem to tear anyone down to me. Not sure what you're reading.

And lord, when you said modeling for kids, that just sounded really inappropriate. I believe the correct term is "be a role model for your kids."

[Anonymous]

To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

We are brown and are considering transferring our because we don’t want our kids to have a half assed high school experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

A neighbor who proudly displayed the "love is love, science is real, all are welcome" flag in her front yard sold her house and moved the family deep within a 'safer' school pyramid, all based on the prospect of her children having to move out of WSHS and attend Lewis. You have to help the poor brown kids, until it can potentially impact your own kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

A neighbor who proudly displayed the "love is love, science is real, all are welcome" flag in her front yard sold her house and moved the family deep within a 'safer' school pyramid, all based on the prospect of her children having to move out of WSHS and attend Lewis. You have to help the poor brown kids, until it can potentially impact your own kids.

When the left wing of the party demands exacting fealty from all democrats, then the party continues to hemorrhage members to the point where it never wins.

I happen to think a person who cares about school quality and has her kids in public school should be welcome in the party, but it seems like you’d rather have her be a republican.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

A neighbor who proudly displayed the "love is love, science is real, all are welcome" flag in her front yard sold her house and moved the family deep within a 'safer' school pyramid, all based on the prospect of her children having to move out of WSHS and attend Lewis. You have to help the poor brown kids, until it can potentially impact your own kids.

Or, maybe she didn’t want her kids in an IB program. Maybe she wanted them to take AP classes. Maybe she didn’t want to have to drive thru the mixing bowl multiple times a week. Maybe she didn’t want her kids to lose all their friends.

Not everything is about race.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

A neighbor who proudly displayed the "love is love, science is real, all are welcome" flag in her front yard sold her house and moved the family deep within a 'safer' school pyramid, all based on the prospect of her children having to move out of WSHS and attend Lewis. You have to help the poor brown kids, until it can potentially impact your own kids.

Or, maybe she didn’t want her kids in an IB program. Maybe she wanted them to take AP classes. Maybe she didn’t want to have to drive thru the mixing bowl multiple times a week. Maybe she didn’t want her kids to lose all their friends.

Not everything is about race.

NP. Exactly.

On top of that, I just checked and McLean HS is majority-minority and has a Black principal. So I don’t think the social justice PP who you responded to knows what she’s talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

A neighbor who proudly displayed the "love is love, science is real, all are welcome" flag in her front yard sold her house and moved the family deep within a 'safer' school pyramid, all based on the prospect of her children having to move out of WSHS and attend Lewis. You have to help the poor brown kids, until it can potentially impact your own kids.

Or, maybe she didn’t want her kids in an IB program. Maybe she wanted them to take AP classes. Maybe she didn’t want to have to drive thru the mixing bowl multiple times a week. Maybe she didn’t want her kids to lose all their friends.

Not everything is about race.

NP. Exactly.

On top of that, I just checked and McLean HS is majority-minority and has a Black principal. So I don’t think the social justice PP who you responded to knows what she’s talking about.

Langley is majority minority too. These are the convenient facts that these idiot leftists forget when they attack fellow democrats who want their kids to have a great education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

Lewis parent here. I think the primary reason people transfer out is because they don't visit the school, they don't meet the teachers and administration, they don't talk to the people who go to the school. They transfer away before they give the school a chance.

And I get it. On paper, Lewis looks scary. People see the average SAT scores and think, "My kid is going to get that score." Or they worry that the high number of ESOL students will hinder their child's ability to learn.

I will say that we stepped into Lewis with hesitation because we thought the same thing. We had two back-up plans for how to transfer our child out if things didn't work out the first year. But we'd also come from a much higher-ranking school in FCPS that wasn't a fantastic experience, and we've had good experiences in lower-ranking elementary school, so we also knew that scores weren't everything. So we decided to try Lewis out.

That's the big thing -- people need to be willing to try the school out in the first place.

I think, also, a lot depends on what you want for your kid. You'll get excellent, devoted teachers who really care, but also, your child won't be getting any state championships for sports (except perhaps in soccer). Your child can walk on pretty much any sports team, can play a bigger part in the drama program, can be a leader in the music program and have fun doing all of it. You'll work side-by-side with parents who speak Spanish or other languages, but language aside, you'll both be out there supporting your kids.

It takes someone stepping through the doors of the school and learning all that. That first step can be hard and scary, but as we found, it can pay off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

Lewis parent here. I think the primary reason people transfer out is because they don't visit the school, they don't meet the teachers and administration, they don't talk to the people who go to the school. They transfer away before they give the school a chance.

And I get it. On paper, Lewis looks scary. People see the average SAT scores and think, "My kid is going to get that score." Or they worry that the high number of ESOL students will hinder their child's ability to learn.

I will say that we stepped into Lewis with hesitation because we thought the same thing. We had two back-up plans for how to transfer our child out if things didn't work out the first year. But we'd also come from a much higher-ranking school in FCPS that wasn't a fantastic experience, and we've had good experiences in lower-ranking elementary school, so we also knew that scores weren't everything. So we decided to try Lewis out.

That's the big thing -- people need to be willing to try the school out in the first place.

I think, also, a lot depends on what you want for your kid. You'll get excellent, devoted teachers who really care, but also, your child won't be getting any state championships for sports (except perhaps in soccer). Your child can walk on pretty much any sports team, can play a bigger part in the drama program, can be a leader in the music program and have fun doing all of it. You'll work side-by-side with parents who speak Spanish or other languages, but language aside, you'll both be out there supporting your kids.

It takes someone stepping through the doors of the school and learning all that. That first step can be hard and scary, but as we found, it can pay off.

You can only raise your children once. It’s not worth the risk to “try it out” especially if they have to then transfer and start again at another school.

No one is going to rewrite the facts about poverty and everything that comes with it. It is wha it is.

[Anonymous]

We had friends who bought a house that sent their kids to Hutchinson ES. The parents visited the school, talked with the Principal, and were genuinely excited to send their child to Hutchinson. The staff was welcoming and great. The Teachers were devoted to kids and teaching. It felt amazing. Their kid went there for K. They moved in the summer because their kid received no real attention from the Teacher because their kid knew the alphabet, could write the alphabet, knew their numbers, shapes, colors, and all of the skills that kids who attend pre-school know. The kid could read a little.

The Teachers were devoted and wonderful and wanted to help kids learn. The other kids were fun and fine, there were no major behavioral issues. But they did not have the same pre-school experience and they were learning letters, sounds, numbers, shapes, colors and the like from scratch. Books were sent home every week for the parents to read to their kids, books that were meant to help the parents learn to read as well as the kids.

Say what you will, but kids arrive at school at different starting points and that is going to impact what the kids can be taught. Kids who are arriving to school not knowing things like the alphabet and their numbers are kids who likely come from homes where the parents cannot help with homework or help with school. The kids will learn at a slower pace because they don't have supports at home to help them learn.

The environment can be great and the teachers can be amazing but there is a difference in what you can learn when you have a peer group that starts school from scratch vs a peer group that starts school having been read to and taught basic concepts at home.

Lewis, Mt. Vernon, Herndon, South Lakes are good schools. You can succeed and thrive there. But they are schools with two schools, the kids in the AP/IB programs and the kids who are not. And that is a very different environment then a school like WSHS or Langley or Oakton. I don't blame parents for wanting their kids in schools were there is less of a divide between the kids and were there are more opportunities for a kid to succeed. And that tends to be at schools with a higher SES and fewer ELL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To the Lewis parent- very glad your child is thriving there. I have good friends whose child experienced a lot of bullying at Key but is also doing well at Lewis.

I know you can only definitively speak for yourself but why do you think the 200 or 300 kids zoned for Lewis transfer out? What are they missing about Lewis that you're seeing present there?

They transfer out because they don't want their kids to go to school with poor brown kids.

A neighbor who proudly displayed the "love is love, science is real, all are welcome" flag in her front yard sold her house and moved the family deep within a 'safer' school pyramid, all based on the prospect of her children having to move out of WSHS and attend Lewis. You have to help the poor brown kids, until it can potentially impact your own kids.

When the left wing of the party demands exacting fealty from all democrats, then the party continues to hemorrhage members to the point where it never wins.

I happen to think a person who cares about school quality and has her kids in public school should be welcome in the party, but it seems like you’d rather have her be a republican.

What are you talking about?

That party wins all the time in FFX. They are the only ones that win, so they can do whatever they want with zero accountability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We had friends who bought a house that sent their kids to Hutchinson ES. The parents visited the school, talked with the Principal, and were genuinely excited to send their child to Hutchinson. The staff was welcoming and great. The Teachers were devoted to kids and teaching. It felt amazing. Their kid went there for K. They moved in the summer because their kid received no real attention from the Teacher because their kid knew the alphabet, could write the alphabet, knew their numbers, shapes, colors, and all of the skills that kids who attend pre-school know. The kid could read a little.

The Teachers were devoted and wonderful and wanted to help kids learn. The other kids were fun and fine, there were no major behavioral issues. But they did not have the same pre-school experience and they were learning letters, sounds, numbers, shapes, colors and the like from scratch. Books were sent home every week for the parents to read to their kids, books that were meant to help the parents learn to read as well as the kids.

Say what you will, but kids arrive at school at different starting points and that is going to impact what the kids can be taught. Kids who are arriving to school not knowing things like the alphabet and their numbers are kids who likely come from homes where the parents cannot help with homework or help with school. The kids will learn at a slower pace because they don't have supports at home to help them learn.

The environment can be great and the teachers can be amazing but there is a difference in what you can learn when you have a peer group that starts school from scratch vs a peer group that starts school having been read to and taught basic concepts at home.

Lewis, Mt. Vernon, Herndon, South Lakes are good schools. You can succeed and thrive there. But they are schools with two schools, the kids in the AP/IB programs and the kids who are not. And that is a very different environment then a school like WSHS or Langley or Oakton. I don't blame parents for wanting their kids in schools were there is less of a divide between the kids and were there are more opportunities for a kid to succeed. And that tends to be at schools with a higher SES and fewer ELL.

This is a great summary. This is why we chose to move out of the Lewis pyramid. I think you'd get a fine, comparable, education - and there would even be *some* advantages in being in a small school (class ranking, etc). However, if you want anything beyond the basic education, clubs, sports, parental involvement and the sense of community, that's where you would miss out. It's really unfortunate and not fair, but only recently did I realize how many school activities are funded by PTAs and involved parents.