Lee High School in Springfield

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Saratoga has very similar families to those you find at schools like Hunt Valley and Orange Hunt.

The house there are nice and affordable, but they take longer to sell than the other West Springfield homes due to Lee HS.

Daventry house have the same issues. Wonderful elementary with West Springfield elementary, but feeds into Lee.

WSHS has a diverse student body, very safe, is solidly middle class, some of the most affordable commutable homes in fairfax county, and has virtually identical achievement to the wealthiest schools in the district.

That is why folks are clamouring to be zoned for WSHS over Lee.

For the affordability of the homes you simply cannot beat the value of the schools.

I'd say WS is similar to the other schools that are solidly "middle class" as defined around here - Robinson, Chantilly and Lake Braddock. The difference in SAT scores between WS and Langley is about the same as the difference between WS and Lee.

WSHS, LB, etc SAT and SOL scores are right there with very little difference between all of the other schools in that top three though ten or eleven. It isbonly the two schools at the very top which have significantly higher scores. The next eight or so schools are basically identicalnin terms of achievement.

Lee HS is not at all a high performing school and scores far lower than those other schools, including WSHS.

Since you're the one who keeps focusing on test scores and labeling entire schools - rather than individual students - as "high performing" or "low performing" here, I'll push back.

The top schools in Fairfax in terms of test scores have been (after TJ), Langley, McLean, Woodson, Madison and Oakton for years. Below that, you have a large number of "solid, middle-class schools" - West Springfield, Robinson, Chantilly, Lake Braddock, Westfield, South Lakes, Fairfax, Herndon, Centreville and South County. At the bottom in terms of test scores, although not always in the same order, are Edison, Stuart, Hayfield, Annandale, Falls Church, Lee and Mount Vernon.

The two schools that don't fit so neatly into those three buckets are Marshall and West Potomac. I'd argue that Marshall will join the first group in another year or two. West Potomac seems to bounce between the second and third groups. If there's any Fairfax school that can be said to have "Langley scores for an affordable price," it's Woodson, not West Springfield.

I would bet that if you can buy in Marshall now it will be the best investment in terms schools because it is going to continue to get better and the pricing will reflect that.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The FBI relocation to Springfield is a long shot.

I don't know about long shot. Seems to me it has just a good a shot as the other locations being proposed. Maybe it will happen, maybe it won't, but I wouldn't say long shot.

Have you been down there lately???? The entire BRAC realignment (the 2005 BRAC law resulted in the transfer of more than 18,000 Department of Defense jobs to Fort Belvoir) has completely transformed the landscape. The secret CIA location no longer exists and now hosts the new buidlings and businesses that serve the Dept Defense. Some of the homes surrounding neighborhoods are selling in 24 hours at competitive prices.

Lee was an excellent school back in the 80s. It rivaled West Springfield HS and actually many W.Spring. neighborhoods were redistricted to Lee. The sports teams were VA State Champions. Boys and Girls won VA State Soccer the same year.

Then- in the 90s the area around the Mall fell to crap. The school got bad. The population attending changed. I have heard it is completely back at the upswing and have a revival of sorts---primarily due to the revilitization due to BRAC.

Sorry , not yet. It's going to take a decade at least after the rebuild of that area.

But, if you are a young couple like me and my wife with young children or children on the way, these might be reasons to seriously consider purchasing in the Lee pyramid. You will get a discount on your housing prices now, and, if things do turn around and the schools zoned for Lee become more desirable, then you could profit from it. We bought in Saratoga last year and, while we did hesitate because of the reputation of the Lee pyramid, but we feel very good so far about our decision. Of course, I suppose time will tell.

I do believe that the property values in Springfield will increase long-term and that time will tell about Lee high school. But do you mean you bought in a neighborhood zoned for Saratoga elementary? That's one of the worst ones in the area from what I've heard. They aren't Title I but have a high FARMS and high ESOL rate. We've seen some good values in the area and it's convenient for us but are very hesitant on the elementary situation.

Title I schools are not bad schools, and in fact have extra resources to serve the populations they have. My DD attended Pine Spring ES in Falls Church, Very small ES with excellent leaderships and excellent teachers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Saratoga has very similar families to those you find at schools like Hunt Valley and Orange Hunt.

The house there are nice and affordable, but they take longer to sell than the other West Springfield homes due to Lee HS.

Daventry house have the same issues. Wonderful elementary with West Springfield elementary, but feeds into Lee.

WSHS has a diverse student body, very safe, is solidly middle class, some of the most affordable commutable homes in fairfax county, and has virtually identical achievement to the wealthiest schools in the district.

That is why folks are clamouring to be zoned for WSHS over Lee.

For the affordability of the homes you simply cannot beat the value of the schools.

I'd say WS is similar to the other schools that are solidly "middle class" as defined around here - Robinson, Chantilly and Lake Braddock. The difference in SAT scores between WS and Langley is about the same as the difference between WS and Lee.

WSHS, LB, etc SAT and SOL scores are right there with very little difference between all of the other schools in that top three though ten or eleven. It isbonly the two schools at the very top which have significantly higher scores. The next eight or so schools are basically identicalnin terms of achievement.

Lee HS is not at all a high performing school and scores far lower than those other schools, including WSHS.

Since you're the one who keeps focusing on test scores and labeling entire schools - rather than individual students - as "high performing" or "low performing" here, I'll push back.

The top schools in Fairfax in terms of test scores have been (after TJ), Langley, McLean, Woodson, Madison and Oakton for years. Below that, you have a large number of "solid, middle-class schools" - West Springfield, Robinson, Chantilly, Lake Braddock, Westfield, South Lakes, Fairfax, Herndon, Centreville and South County. At the bottom in terms of test scores, although not always in the same order, are Edison, Stuart, Hayfield, Annandale, Falls Church, Lee and Mount Vernon.

The two schools that don't fit so neatly into those three buckets are Marshall and West Potomac. I'd argue that Marshall will join the first group in another year or two. West Potomac seems to bounce between the second and third groups. If there's any Fairfax school that can be said to have "Langley scores for an affordable price," it's Woodson, not West Springfield.

I would bet that if you can buy in Marshall now it will be the best investment in terms schools because it is going to continue to get better and the pricing will reflect that.

I'd wonder about that. We bought a then-new house in the Marshall district in the mid-1990s, rather than buy an older house nearby in the Madison district. At the time, we reasoned that any FCPS high school would be good, so why not go for the house we preferred? As it turned out, we were fortunate. The area boomed with new, high-end construction and the school also improved (Jay Pearson is a good guy and runs a tight ship). When we sold the house a few years ago, we definitely made a good bit more than we would have made had we bought and sold the older house in the Madison district, which was already a known quantity.

But, from what I can tell, the market has now caught up. From looking at current listings in the Marshall district, I can see some homes on the market where sellers who bought in the 2009-10 time frame will take a hit, assuming a standard sales commission. It's very difficult to time these things. I'd buy because I like the house/schools/commute, not because you can pigeon-hole what's going to be the "best investment."