Woodson, Lake Braddock, West Springfield experiences

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does Woodson pyramid really have more fights than Robinson or is that some made up bs? What about the former drug ring at Robinson? Is there somewhere that a person can look to get real stats for the different schools on these sorts of issues?

No. My kid is at Frost and he said he has not personally seen any fights and is not worried about it. Nothing crazy happening in the bathroom either.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were considering the same areas years ago when we bought. Kids are still in elementary so not a ton of info to share, but I can share: like it or not, Woodson enjoys a stronger academic reputation than the rest of that group, whatever the reason may be. It also is known for type A parents -- that is where we wound up buying, and I will say that most neighbors are highly educated, but have not picked careers based on high pay: many high ranking feds (State Dept, FDA, Treasury, DOJ) here, plus respected journalists, or senior military.

Woodson has the kid who just won America's Next Top Scientist from 3M, no small feat. They have also won the e-sports state title the past few years, as well as state championships in cross country and maybe volleyball? Terrible football most years we have been here, basketball and swim seem solid. Pretty politically aware school, protests on global issues and a very PC feel among HS kids we know.

Lake Braddock is a perennial football powerhouse, unlike the others you are considering, also dance team may have won some big championships. Have heard of not nice things occasionally for LGBTQ crowd from
jocks, less politically active kids than Woodson for sure. Think it on the whole has weakest academic rep
Of all schools you are considering but also may have beaten TJ in some state science comp within past few years so that would be significant.

Robinson known for IB program, when we bought our realtor said many clients who want strong academics without high pressure environments wind up picking Robinson. Don't hear as much about Robinson in general compared to the others.

Sometimes I think West Springfield seems like the happiest medium of all the places we looked. Strong school for academics, strong school for sports, maybe the most well-rounded? It is an extremely dense military population, honestly would assume 30%, which will impact the student body and your kids with the moves.

West Springfield is the most moderate/centrist area politically in all of northern Virginia and probably one of the least political of all the fcps high schools. Rarely do they have walk outs for national political issues, and when they do it is usually a very small group of students protesting.

This helps to make for a more welcoming school climate, particularly for moderate or conservative families.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

DP: Well the average SAT at Chantilly was higher than Woodson's last year--which is what these seem to map on to. The differences between these schools are really miniscule.

[Anonymous]

These schools are really all very similar demographically, with WS skewing more military and Woodson skewing a little wealthier. I don't think there's an appreciable difference in atmosphere. They all have high-achieving kids and problem kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

DP: Well the average SAT at Chantilly was higher than Woodson's last year--which is what these seem to map on to. The differences between these schools are really miniscule.

In the last reported year Chantilly's SAT score was higher than Woodson. For the 4 years prior to that, Woodson's was higher than Chantilly's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

DP: Well the average SAT at Chantilly was higher than Woodson's last year--which is what these seem to map on to. The differences between these schools are really miniscule.

In the last reported year Chantilly's SAT score was higher than Woodson. For the 4 years prior to that, Woodson's was higher than Chantilly's.

I'd love to see this broken down by demographics.

[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:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

DP: Well the average SAT at Chantilly was higher than Woodson's last year--which is what these seem to map on to. The differences between these schools are really miniscule.

In the last reported year Chantilly's SAT score was higher than Woodson. For the 4 years prior to that, Woodson's was higher than Chantilly's.

I'd love to see this broken down by demographics.

FCPS hasn't published demographic breakdowns of SAT scores in many years. In the most recent data I saw, the ranking of subgroup's SAT scores generally followed the school's overall ranking. The main exception was for white students - the top schools were Langley/McLean/Madison/Woodson/Oakton in some order, then Marshall, then Herndon/South Lakes/West Potomac (where the white students score pretty well but larger minority populations make the school's overall scores lower), then Lake Braddock/Robinson/West Springfield, then Chantilly along with Centreville and Westfield.

So basically Chantilly's improving SAT scores are largely due to an increasing Asian population. I also think this explains perceptions of Chantilly quite a bit - Asian families perceive it to be of high quality, whereas white families think of it as similar to Centreville and Westfield.

[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:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

DP: Well the average SAT at Chantilly was higher than Woodson's last year--which is what these seem to map on to. The differences between these schools are really miniscule.

In the last reported year Chantilly's SAT score was higher than Woodson. For the 4 years prior to that, Woodson's was higher than Chantilly's.

I'd love to see this broken down by demographics.

FCPS hasn't published demographic breakdowns of SAT scores in many years. In the most recent data I saw, the ranking of subgroup's SAT scores generally followed the school's overall ranking. The main exception was for white students - the top schools were Langley/McLean/Madison/Woodson/Oakton in some order, then Marshall, then Herndon/South Lakes/West Potomac (where the white students score pretty well but larger minority populations make the school's overall scores lower), then Lake Braddock/Robinson/West Springfield, then Chantilly along with Centreville and Westfield.

So basically Chantilly's improving SAT scores are largely due to an increasing Asian population. I also think this explains perceptions of Chantilly quite a bit - Asian families perceive it to be of high quality, whereas white families think of it as similar to Centreville and Westfield.

I think this is exactly right. For me, academics are aimportant but both English and math and also other subjects. So I'd rank Woodson higher than Chantilly probably (not having any direct experience with these schools but knowing what different subgroups are after).

[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:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I thought the top 5 was Langley, McLean, Madison, Oakton and Chantilly

lol how did Chantilly sneak in there? I guess it depends on who you ask and what your priorities are!

DP: Well the average SAT at Chantilly was higher than Woodson's last year--which is what these seem to map on to. The differences between these schools are really miniscule.

In the last reported year Chantilly's SAT score was higher than Woodson. For the 4 years prior to that, Woodson's was higher than Chantilly's.

I'd love to see this broken down by demographics.

FCPS hasn't published demographic breakdowns of SAT scores in many years. In the most recent data I saw, the ranking of subgroup's SAT scores generally followed the school's overall ranking. The main exception was for white students - the top schools were Langley/McLean/Madison/Woodson/Oakton in some order, then Marshall, then Herndon/South Lakes/West Potomac (where the white students score pretty well but larger minority populations make the school's overall scores lower), then Lake Braddock/Robinson/West Springfield, then Chantilly along with Centreville and Westfield.

So basically Chantilly's improving SAT scores are largely due to an increasing Asian population. I also think this explains perceptions of Chantilly quite a bit - Asian families perceive it to be of high quality, whereas white families think of it as similar to Centreville and Westfield.

The demographic breakdown by race/ethnicity is here: https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-sat-scores-continue-surpass-state-and-global-averages
There is no breakdown by race/ethnicity by school.
One thing to note--is that FCPS has higher SAT participation rates than the rest of the state--so you would expect it to have lower scores than areas that have only the top students taking the SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We were considering the same areas years ago when we bought. Kids are still in elementary so not a ton of info to share, but I can share: like it or not, Woodson enjoys a stronger academic reputation than the rest of that group, whatever the reason may be. It also is known for type A parents -- that is where we wound up buying, and I will say that most neighbors are highly educated, but have not picked careers based on high pay: many high ranking feds (State Dept, FDA, Treasury, DOJ) here, plus respected journalists, or senior military.

Woodson has the kid who just won America's Next Top Scientist from 3M, no small feat. They have also won the e-sports state title the past few years, as well as state championships in cross country and maybe volleyball? Terrible football most years we have been here, basketball and swim seem solid. Pretty politically aware school, protests on global issues and a very PC feel among HS kids we know.

Lake Braddock is a perennial football powerhouse, unlike the others you are considering, also dance team may have won some big championships. Have heard of not nice things occasionally for LGBTQ crowd from
jocks, less politically active kids than Woodson for sure. Think it on the whole has weakest academic rep
Of all schools you are considering but also may have beaten TJ in some state science comp within past few years so that would be significant.

Robinson known for IB program, when we bought our realtor said many clients who want strong academics without high pressure environments wind up picking Robinson. Don't hear as much about Robinson in general compared to the others.

Sometimes I think West Springfield seems like the happiest medium of all the places we looked. Strong school for academics, strong school for sports, maybe the most well-rounded? It is an extremely dense military population, honestly would assume 30%, which will impact the student body and your kids with the moves.

Woodson for the past decade plus has had a very strong basketball program. They won the state championship around 2016 or so. There was a huge write-up in the Washington Post. It’s a solid school for both academics and sports, and often has competitive seasons even in football.

Some beautiful neighborhoods feed into Woodson, if you like the mid-century modern aesthetic and lots of trees.