what are the best elementary schools in Fairfax Co?
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Anonymous
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I would recommend:
Churchill Road ES in Mclean address (22101) and Haycock ES (Falls church address), if your child will be placed in AAP (GT) class. |
Anonymous
Yes. I have one in AAP and one not and they are both receiving a top notch education. The entire school benefits from the resources allotted to the center. |
Anonymous
| PP How so? Just curious. |
Anonymous
An AAP Center school tends to bring in more involved parents, so these parents tend to support the PTA more, and you'll see a greater variety of extracurricular activities (chess club, robotics, Odyssey of the Mind, etc.) then you will see at the more middle class public elementary schools. Yes, there will be exceptions at the very affluent elementary schools as the PTAs have extraordinarily high bank account balances to fund these activities anyway. The top 15 most affluent FCPS elementary schools (based on spring 2011 FCPS indexing) are: 1. Wolftrap 2. Great Falls 3. Colvin Run 4. Sangster 5. Chesterbrook 6. Forestville 7. Crossfield 8. Flint Hill 9. Churchill Road 10. Sunrise Valley 11. Oak Hill 12. Haycock 13. Wakefield Forest 14. Silverbrook 15. Fox Mill If affluence = "best elementary school" then this is your list. |
Anonymous
| How are you defining "most affluent"? What type of "indexing" are you describing? |
Anonymous
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I would look for the top performing schools that are not most affluent. For quality of schools, rich parents have more resources to ensure the excellence of their kids.
On the other hand, high performing schools without those advantages may mean better teaching |
Anonymous
The FCPS indexing. They used it to determine what schools were the least affluent for roll-out of full-day Kindergarten. |
Anonymous
Here's the link to the old thread. http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/30/157003.page#1513765 |
Anonymous
To the extent that this indexing actually measured affluence (which I don't recall exactly; need to look at the link), there are several affluent schools that already had full-day kindergarten that would not have been on the list. Mantua is one that comes to mind. In the beginning of the FDK rollout, it wasn't just the disadvantaged schools that got it. |
Anonymous
http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/docs/questions/FY2011BudgetQuestionsandResponses.pdf The implementation of full day kindergarten (FDK) was guided by a priority list based on several factors including, but not limited to, a risk index developed by the FCPS Office of Program Evaluation. The purpose of the risk index was to establish a priority order for implementing FDK in schools that do not already have it. This risk index is based on two-year averages of two criteria for each elementary school: (1) the percentage of students receiving free or reducedmeals (FRM); and (2) the percentage of students with limited English proficiency (LEP). Other factors that may have an impact on full-day kindergarten implementation include the capacity of the particular school, upcoming boundary changes, special education centers, and the reliance on private kindergarten by base school families. |
Anonymous
Thanks for tracking this down; sounds right. Never thought of Wolftrap (which splits about 50-50 between Madison and Marshall) as covering the most affluent part of Fairfax County, but it's all SFHs, so the FRL/ESOL #s are very low. |
Anonymous
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Oh my. I can't afford any of these 'best' schools. Wait a minute... what is this Greenbriar West? Must be a far better neighborhood than the Greenbriar East and so affordable. It's ranked so high in comparison, so it must be more affluent, and therefor I'm sure to get a better education experience there. (facepalm)
OP... most of the 'best' schools are ranked as such because they are AAP feeder schools. My advice is to find a nice place to live in a neighborhood that fits your tastes. If your kid is super bright, they'll end up at one of the AAP schools like GBW or many of the other 'best' ranked schools. Otherwise, any FCPS will more than meet your kids needs in terms of academic excellence. In fact, here's my experience as a parent with a kid who has been AAP and another who wasn't, both attending the AAP feeder because it's our in-boundery school. The AAP kid did great as expected. The non-aap kid probably struggled more than they needed to because they always seemed to get the newer, less experienced teachers. The true veterans were slotted in AAP classrooms that my non-aap kid got little exposure to. Truth be told, if I had the choice I probably would have preferred my 'average' kid go to an 'average' school. They'll have a much greater opportunity to get placed into a more experienced teacher's classroom. By far that was the most critical aspect of each academic year feeling like a success or not. |
Anonymous
| FWIW, we are in-boundary for GBW and we bought here right as our child was starting K this year (after the FDK decision was made - that decision made househunting so much easier for us). We picked it over GBE because it has the FLES program and we liked that it was the AAP center so that our child wouldn't have to switch schools should she test into AAP. It is the same neighborhood, yes, but the schools do have a few differences OTHER than student body makeup (which is primarily affected by the odd boundaries for each school). |
Anonymous
| I'm living within the Wolftrap school district and am positive that I'm not living in the most affluent area of the County nor do I or my neighbors feel particularly affluent. Agree that the list by 10:39 is a list of schools with low FRL/ESOL students. |
Anonymous
That list was never meant to measure affluence in the traditional sense. It mostly means there are virtually zero poor or english language learners in your district, as opposed to other schools. I don't know your boundary, but I am probably safe to assume it includes almost no THs, condos or apartment buildings. I used to live in boundary for Armstrong. There were all levels of home types there, from the tiny TH I was living in to million dollar homes. In terms of housing stock, it was pretty close to Aldrin right across the way (although there were NO SFH communities we could afford in Aldrin, whereas there was one in Armstrong). Aldrin had gotten FDK a while back, and Armstrong would have waited some more if the 2 or 3 year rollout had happened. The difference in their student body makeup was that there were several apartment complexes in the Aldrin boundary and none in Armstrong's. It really does all come down to what lies within your boundaries. |