FCPS comprehensive boundary review

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

If FCPS eliminates IB at Lewis and switches Lewis to AP, closing the transfer loophole, the Lewis farms rate will immediately drop to around 50%, perhaps even below 50% in a couple of years if they can get a functioning AP program with pass rates closer to Hayfield.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

They need to dump IB at most of these schools and institute a full slate of AP’s. Maybe there isn’t enough staff right now to have a full slate of AP’s at Lewis, but they could at least have the top 10-12 most common. Close up the majority of the transfers and kids will come back. I’d also argue for a nice renovation to sweeten the deal a little, because everyone likes being in a nicer facility.

Unfortunately the end of IB at most schools will never happen in FCPS because FCPS leadership loves it and always talks it up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

They need to dump IB at most of these schools and institute a full slate of AP’s. Maybe there isn’t enough staff right now to have a full slate of AP’s at Lewis, but they could at least have the top 10-12 most common. Close up the majority of the transfers and kids will come back. I’d also argue for a nice renovation to sweeten the deal a little, because everyone likes being in a nicer facility.

Unfortunately the end of IB at most schools will never happen in FCPS because FCPS leadership loves it and always talks it up.

There are 40 AP courses and I think the AP schools at FCPS offer at least 28 or so. If they converted Lewis to AP, they should make a commitment to offer a full slate of AP courses, even if enrollment in some of the courses is low in the initial years.

You can argue for a nice renovation, but they would need a new renovation queue first and Lewis would be behind Annandale first and then McLean. However, getting out a new renovation so people could see there is a plan for Lewis would be an improvement, and people have been telling them that for years, but they are too consumed with stuff people don't want like the boundary review to make that happen. It's crazy to think of how FCPS continues to shoot itself in the foot by ignoring common-sense suggestions and then doubling down on their past mistakes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

GTFOH. Meridian HS in Falls Church City is half the size of Lewis and offers a full IB program. Lewis can offer a robust AP slate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

GTFOH. Meridian HS in Falls Church City is half the size of Lewis and offers a full IB program. Lewis can offer a robust AP slate.

with a 10% FARMS rate. It's funny how a lack of poor kids enables a robust curriculum

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

GTFOH. Meridian HS in Falls Church City is half the size of Lewis and offers a full IB program. Lewis can offer a robust AP slate.

with a 10% FARMS rate. It's funny how a lack of poor kids enables a robust curriculum

Look at Hayfield, Falls Church, Wakefield (APS). It's eminently doable at Lewis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

It would be hundreds of students bigger than the biggest private high schools.

The can also have very small classes for the most advanced AP classes.

I am sure a class of 6 to 12 kids in AP chemistry would result in the Lewis pass rates for that class skyrocketing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

GTFOH. Meridian HS in Falls Church City is half the size of Lewis and offers a full IB program. Lewis can offer a robust AP slate.

with a 10% FARMS rate. It's funny how a lack of poor kids enables a robust curriculum

Look at Hayfield, Falls Church, Wakefield (APS). It's eminently doable at Lewis.

Hayfield is 31%, Wakefield is 34%, but around half of Lewis. The only one close is Falls Church and it's much larger which means a bigger cohort

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

It sounds like you don't want to improve Lewis, but prefer kids from other schools get rezoned there so your kid can transfer to their school or Lake Braddock using the IB loophole.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

GTFOH. Meridian HS in Falls Church City is half the size of Lewis and offers a full IB program. Lewis can offer a robust AP slate.

with a 10% FARMS rate. It's funny how a lack of poor kids enables a robust curriculum

Look at Hayfield, Falls Church, Wakefield (APS). It's eminently doable at Lewis.

Hayfield is 31%, Wakefield is 34%, but around half of Lewis. The only one close is Falls Church and it's much larger which means a bigger cohort

You're flailing. Falls Church has about 2100 kids, and Lewis about 1650. If FC can offer over 30 AP courses, which it does, Lewis could offer a large number of AP courses as well, especially with the reduction of pupil placements and enrollment increase that would occur if Lewis switched to AP.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

Lower-ranked school has space, was more recently renovated, may offer more opportunities for kids to make teams or get certain positions in plays or in bands, may be perceived as friendlier, etc. Reactions could also depend on whether families know each other from existing split feeders.

The numbers don’t support this:

Transfers out of school 2024-2025 School Year:
Herndon 309
Lewis 251
Mount Vernon 367
West Potomac 189

Current Capacity/Capacity if students stayed at zoned school:
Herndon 81%/92.4%
Lewis 87%/99.8%
Mount Vernon 75%/90%
West Potomac 92%/98%

The school board really needs to look at the schools that are over and under capacity and limit the number of transfers out of low capacity schools and into high capacity schools.

While I agree that looking at transfers is a good place to start, the numbers above are somewhat misleading. You would need to have more details on the number of voluntary pupil placements. I believe some of the numbers above represent students not transferring voluntarily, but for special education purposes or perhaps disciplinary reasons.

Still agree that FCPS needs to do as much as possible to eliminate the voluntary pupil placements.

I consider this the lowest hanging fruit for basically each of the 8130 categories. It’s the easiest first step in this process, and as PP points out, would almost instantly fix capacity issues.

So the fix is to ruin the ability of hundreds of kids to get a decent education?

The school board thinks every high school will provide a decent education.

Some transfers will still need to be allowed (TJ, special education, students in language immersion programs in elementary school that are continuing the language through high school, and transfers to one of the academies for specialized programming.)

Transfers for other reasons should be made on a case by case basis and need to be applied for each year. If the high school is over capacity, then they shouldn’t allow transfers.

I'd argue that once the test scores fall below a certain number, transfer out should be a matter of right. Let the schools focus on the students who need help, but don't use that as an excuse to sacrifice other students' educations

So the answer would be to redistrict other neighborhoods to go to a school and sacrifice their educations? The School Board needs to find a way to bring up the test scores/graduation percent/etc at the low ranked schools so that students there will receive a better education and not want to transfer out of the schools.

Any ideas? How do you make a high poverty, high ell school on par with even Hayfield or Edison let alone WSHS or Langley

They don't need to be "on par" with WSHS or Langley. The school board should be working on graduation rates and helping children raise their test scores.

They can make the schools closer together in test scores and graduation rates by shifting children around. That doesn't help students learn and achieve more, but why should the school board care about actual people when they can spend time worrying about stats attached to different school buildings?

again, any ideas?

Sure.

Eliminate IB at Lewis.

Switch to all AP. This will bring back perhaps 150-200 high performing students or more to Lewis, who will presumably take AP classes. It will also return the Lewis enrollment to somewhere in the 90% capacity range, which eliminates the physical justification for rezoning.

The returning transfers and high performing kids at Lewis will now be taking all AP classes instead of IB or transferring to AP schools.

Since these IB to AP transfers and kids taking IB classes at Lewis are presumably the higher performing, middle class kids with engaged parents, the AP scores at Lewis will jump significantly from the low teens for a pass rate to something more respectable. Maybe it will be round SoCo or Hayfield's level. Maybe a little lower to start. But definitely, it will be higher than the current 15 percent AP pass rate displayed on the FCPS profile for Lewis asian students and a low of under 7 percent for hispanic kids.

That immediate jump in scores that right now are so low that they scare everyone away, especially high performing hispanic and AA kids who see the scores of their demographic at neighboring school 4x to 5x higher than at Lewis (around 9x higher for hispanics at WSHS.)

It doesn't matter who they transfer to Lewis from neighboring high schools if the AP pass rates are in the single digits to low teens.

It doesn't matter what IB looks like there (not great, but much better than AP scores at Lewis) because no one wants IB in that area and no one wants an AP school with pass rates hovering around 10%

Remove IB.

This closes the IB to AP transfer loophole.

Focus on giving the advanced kids every possible support to raise the AP scores at Lewis. Recruit great teachers. Pay them a bonus for increasing the scores to specific goals, like on par with Hayfield and SoCo. Make the classes as small as necessary to offer the advanced AP classes, even if that means only 5 kids in AP multivariable or 8 kids in AP chem.

The score average will go up to a pass rate that is not as abominable as the current pass rates.

Raising AP pass rates to a respectable level will make the bleeding stop and make the school less undesireable to parents.

Lewis no longer being the school to avoid will raise the pride level of the student body, which will benefit the school across the board.

Coupled with a full renovation, and Lewis can turn around to a respectable level of acceptability in just a few years.

It all starts with getting rid of IB, before rezoning.

Secondarily, give Key middle school AAP. This should have happened years ago after the successful stand up of AAP at Irving. Every middle school should have AAP with no transfers between pyramids.

So the plan is to bring kids back. How does that improve the scores for kids already there

Eliminating IB and switching to AP will immediately inprove AP scores at Lewis by a notable amount even if not a single student returns to Lewis. It might double them over one year, and again the following few years.

+1. IB is a crappy program generally, and particularly ill-suited to a school like Lewis, but there's no reason why they can't get Lewis up to Falls Church or Hayfield levels with a commitment to AP. These schools may have lower ratings, but people believe that their own kids can get a good education there.

Lewis is 63% FARMS, 53% Hispanic. Hayfield is 32% and 31%

Yes, and Falls Church is 64% FARMS and 61% Hispanic. Hayfield also has a significantly larger Black population than Lewis or Falls Church (28% vs. 10% at Lewis and 5% at Falls Church), and Black students historically score the lowest on standardized tests in FCPS along with Hispanic kids.

Yet, both Falls Church and Hayfield are known to have cohorts of high-achieving kids, while Lewis doesn't enjoy a similar reputation, due in large measure to its less attractive academic offerings.

Hayfield has half the farms rate, it shouldn't even be in the same conversation. Falls Church is a third larger than Lewis. Even if the advanced kids are in the same proportion, there are that many more of them to fill out classes

Get rid of IB and we save money, pupil placements out of Lewis decline, and the enrollment increases. This isn't just win/win, it's win/win/win.

Even if every kid came back (including those at Bryant), it would still be one of the smallest schools in the county. There wouldnt be enough kids to justify a full AP slate

It sounds like you don't want to improve Lewis, but prefer kids from other schools get rezoned there so your kid can transfer to their school or Lake Braddock using the IB loophole.

Clearly so, and not compelling at all.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:2022 data:

https://www.fcps.edu/news/fcps-high-schools-ranked-among-best-virginia-and-nation-us-news-and-world-report

There is a reason that parents with students at the top of this list don’t want their children to be redistricted to schools at the bottom of the list. It has nothing to do with racism. Why would any parent welcome a boundary adjustment from one of the top high schools in the county/country to one of high schools on the bottom of this list?

2023

https://www.fcps.edu/news/six-fcps-high-schools-rank-among-virginias-best-us-news-world-report

The only FCPS high schools listed are the schools in the top 10 in VA:

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, #1
McLean High School, #4
Langley High School, #5
Oakton High School, #6
Marshall High School, #9
W.T. Woodson High School, #10

Why did you list 2023 instead of 2024?

#1 - TJ
#2 - Langley
#3 - McLean
#4 - Oakton
#5 - McLean
#6 - Marshall
#9 - Madison
#10 - West Springfield

FCPS didn’t do a press release for 2024. It doesn’t seem wise for them to show how much better some FCPS schools are compared to others (according to state/national rankings). With so many people upset about potential boundary adjustments, I’m sure FCPS will try to limit rankings or anything else that would show the education students receive is not the same at every high school.

But rankings don't show the "education students receive is not the same at every high school", it just shows that some schools are more affluent than others. School rankings tend to be measures of student body wealth (or aptitude in case of magnets) moreso than school quality, but people often conflate these things... sometimes intentionally and sometimes out of ignorance.

I don’t really buy this. There may be a correlation between student body affluence and rankings, but these rankings disclose the criteria, and the criteria is legitimate and makes sense to most people (e.g. test scores, graduation rates, etc.).

Again, there may be a correlation between student body attributes and rankings, but a lot of what they measure are student outcomes that many parents value when choosing a school.

So close! Then smacking yourself in the face with the fact that both test scores and graduation rates are directly correlated to affluence.

Awfully confident in yourself for the least nuanced thinker on this discussion board. You’d probably go to the mats in arguing that warm weather causes shark attacks. 🙄

You would do yourself a big favor by learning the distinction between correlation and causation and related concepts.

DP. Are you the poster who corrected another poster for writing "Title 1" instead of "Title I"? If so, sounds like you need a big lesson in humility.