Is FCPS overhyped? even top rated schools seem meh?
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Anonymous
DP. I’m not a MAGA Catholic, but I am a person who has taught in both public and Catholic high schools. They simply don’t compare. In public, I was tasked with performing miracles with no resources. I burned out. In private, I am given the resources and respect to do my job well. It’s about teacher support and teacher morale, and the publics aren’t doing well on either front right now. And this has nothing to do with politics or religion. It’s about resources. |
Anonymous
That’s because parents support the school and student. It is not FCPS. Hs has been a disaster. Teachers do not easily post info (it’s late or in some weird place.). I can tell they don’t read my son’s IEP. Slow to respond to any question - a week or more! That is not helpful. |
Anonymous
But, no when you teach or have your kids attend a Catholic school, it absolutely IS about the religion. That is the point of their religion classes and chapel. It is very, very clear. You may be happier with being able to kick behavior issues out, or problem parents out or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that religious schools teach religion. They aren’t sponsoring public schools, they aren’t tending to the poor students en mass. These are Catholics who accept money from people to teach their children reading, writing, socialstudies and religion. |
Anonymous
| My kids went through Catholic K-8 and FCPS high FARMS high school. We have no complaints. They were challenged academically, took 8+ AP courses scoring mostly 4-5s, were active in clubs and sports, and made lifelong friends. We are glad we saved $$ (and gas!) by not sending them to Catholic high school. Their former peers at PVI and DJO have not had impressive college placements compared to their k-8 classmates that went to public high school. Their FCPS teachers communicated on a regular basis, were happy to write rec letters, and my kids had great banter with them. My eldest is at a top 25 university. |
Anonymous
That’s 7. And yes, nobody’s disputing that. We know that those pockets with heavily involved and wealthy parents translates to excellent test taking students who will have high graduation rates and high college acceptance rates. It does not translate to best school system though, as the success is not seen across the county as it is dependent on the students family much more than the school. That’s why you see that over all APS and LCPS are higher ranked than FCPS even when we do have the high achievement parents boosting FCPS. All of this very much proves the point. |
Anonymous
We lived in one of those school districts in Massachusetts. A few towns have extremely good schools and the rest are “fine”. The mid Atlantic is not organized that way, so if you take into consideration how the school systems are organized FCPS is very good. |
Anonymous
Pa and NJ are also organized by township. Maryland on south are all county based for the most part--except for cities for example. Don't the FCPS, Arlington, and Loudoun County school systems typically still rank at the top of all Va school districts? |
Anonymous
The question was about teacher support and morale, which is absolutely about resources and not religion. At the Catholic school, I’m provided with time to grade papers (additional planning periods), whereas in the public it had to be done at home. At the Catholic school, I have a max of 90 students, whereas my largest load in the public was 176. At the Catholic school, I have a small administration tasked with supporting teachers. At the public, I had a large admin and a ton of “specialists” who created work for me in order to justify their positions outside of the classroom. At the Catholic school, I can be intentional with my curriculum. At the public, I was given a poor curriculum I had to spend time tailoring and altering to fit the needs of my students. And you’re wrong about kicking kids out. We have many students with learning plans and behavioral issues. The difference is we can help them better because teachers have more time and more supports. So say what you will about Catholic schools, but my direct experience with both leads me to believe teachers are better supported in Catholic. That can lead, understandably, to better student outcomes. |
Anonymous
Your point, then, isn't that FCPS isn't doing a good job so much as that student demographics in APS and LCPS are now more affluent overall. But, when you look at the affluent schools in each of these districts, it's the affluent schools in FCPS coming out on top. |
Anonymous
+1. Now all of our resources go to special needs, ESOL, and the poor. It is just a fact of life. |
Anonymous
Interesting. Can you please elaborate more on resources with specific examples? What resources did parochial schools provide specifically that public schools do not? Or was this mostly smaller class sizes? Was it 2 teachers per class (teacher and assistant)? Was it involvement and help of parent volunteers in each classroom? We had "class parents" in early elementary out of state (public) and volunteering was very much expected, although led to a lot of grumbling between FT working moms vs. SAHMs. Our class sizes were large and in early elementary there was at first an assistant per each class to help out the teacher. Later it went downhill and assistants disappeared. |
Anonymous
Maybe comparing school districts is just a stupid exercise. These are vast areas with different socio-economic factor zones. If you want to compare districts then you need to compare schools (not even neighborhoods) like comparing highest scoring school in APS to highest scoring in FCPS. I don't think that wealthy areas, especially "enclave-like" neighborhoods with large wealth concentration that represent majority of zoning always translates to highest performing schools, because at certain level of wealth parents just go with private schools and general population in these areas tends to be older. There are many examples across the US where wealthy neighborhoods do not have high performing schools. |
Anonymous
True. However, FCPS generally isn't one of them. |
Anonymous
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FWIW, came from a city school and our experience thus far in elementary with two kids, one older, one younger:
-Fewer teacher interactions (only one individual conference/year), but always very responsive if we wrote with a concern -City school was definitely better at both preventing bullying and handling/addressing it if it occurred - even got emails from specials teachers if something minor happened in their class -random assignment grades mostly don't get reported in schoolology (occasionally will see one random test score). I think Middle school uses them more (7th grade and up?), so beyond some assignments coming home with comments, do not have a great picture of how things are going until the 1:1 conference at the end of October where iready, assessment scores get reported. -Does seem that FCPS is better at teaching reading mechanics than the city school with more of a systematic, what seems to be phonics based, approach. |
Anonymous
| Public schools are public schools. |