Great Schools -- no longer useful
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Anonymous
I have no idea why you keep going off on Kent Gardens ES in Fairfax after another posted praised the diversity at ASF in Arlington, but I will say it's nice to know the entire ES-MS-HS pyramid (KG/Longfellow/McLean) is solid (all 9s on GreatSchools). Maybe some day you'll be similarly happy about the schools in Alexandria and won't go around looking to pick fights. |
Anonymous
Not picking fights. I'm making a comment about diversity. A diverse elementary in ACPS that is performing right on par with a supposedly elite and more homogeneous "upper class" McLean school. That's all. Touchy touchy.... |
Anonymous
From what you quoted, the ACPS school is only "on par" if you make whatever adjustments you arbitrarily decided were necessary to adjust for the different demographics at the higher ranked (by both GreatSchools and Schooldigger) school in McLean. And nobody but you labeled the McLean school "elite" or "upper class." With such a big chip on your shoulder, whatever point you presumably otherwise might have wanted to make to the effect that some ACPS schools do a good job with the students enrolled in those schools was largely lost in all the bitterness. Whether you recognize it or not, it ultimately comes across as if you resent, not value, all the "diversity" in your schools. |
Anonymous
What? Hello, nonsensical run-on sentence! |
Anonymous
Try to keep up next time. |
Anonymous
+100 MCLEAN. |
Anonymous
| How are those playdates with Tiger Moms going? |
Anonymous
I wouldn't want to be around either of you. First poster makes clear she doesn't care about the disadvantaged kids at her school, just her own kids. Second poster taunts her by suggesting she can't afford a house in a better district. First poster responds with tired cliches about "lily white" schools and "crappy" houses. You're both sad, wherever you live. |
Anonymous
You are mis-understanding the first post (I'm the author). It's not that I don't care about the disadvantaged kids -- I'm just not going to dismiss a school b/c it has a certain percentage of brown/black/ESOL/FARMS kids --- who in fact, across the country, do score lower on standardized tests. My kids' HS (when they are old enough to go there) is about 30% white. Of COURSE I care how the other 70% of kids do and of course I would love for the 70% to be super high scoring kids. But, I'm dealing with facts here. It's a fact that schools in FCPS and ACPS with higher proportions of minority/poor/ESOL kids have lower overall scores. You can dismiss that school out of hand and call it a "bad school" -- attributing the low overall passing rate to poor teaching, OR you can look a little deeper and see if non-minority/non-poor/non-ESOL kids are doing pretty good at that school. Of course it would be wonderful if the disadvantaged groups were brought into the equally high-performing category as kids with college-educated parents and means ... but that is not yet a reality. If my kids can get a good education in a school that is majority minority, then I don't need to chase the conventional "wisdom" on DCUM that any parent who loves their children must buy into McLean, Langely, Woodson, or Oakton. It gets really old hearing how those are the only acceptable schools and most of the rest are "bad schools" to be avoided. Heaven forbid your child go to school where there are kids taking technical/vocational education courses! The old version of Great Schools allowed parents to see that a "6" school-wide rating did not mean that every sub-group at the school was passing at an "average" rate. It allowed parents to see that various groups had different success rates on the tests. Maybe that doesn't matter to some people b/c they value the overall influence of peers and they want those peers to be overwhelmingly high-achieving. That's fine. But it was a valuable metric to others and now it is no longer available. |
Anonymous
Thank you for supplementing your comments. It might have been a more productive thread had you not flown off the handle in response to a troll-like comment and treated it like an excuse to rail against "lily white" schools and "crappy" homes in more expensive areas. People who live in areas with higher-ranked schools aren't simply chasing GreatSchool ratings. There are a host of reasons why people live in those areas - they typically are close to jobs; increasingly are close to public transportation; have lower crime rates; and may fare better in the event of an economic downturn if the post-2008 experience is a guide. I have spent far more time than you'll ever know defending the so-called "bad schools" against gratuitous "must avoid at all costs" posts, but it also gets tiring when others launch equally insulting attacks on higher ranked schools. I do find it curious that you focus on four schools in FCPS as examples of schools that you think get too much love here when some of the biggest critics of schools like TC Williams in Alexandria are Arlington residents in the Yorktown and W-L districts who call themselves "ACPS refugees" and recommend their schools with as much enthusiasm as any FCPS parents. Happy New Year. |
Anonymous
Were you the poster who told the person who is happy with a "6" school that she did not care about disadvantaged kids? |
Anonymous
I would hope ACPS ends up more like schools in South Arlington - remaining SES diverse, but with a reputation for being well managed. It may end up more like North Arlington or McLean, but I think that is unlikely due to both the RE market and to the determination of the City to retain affordable housing, and I do not think most citizens of Alexandria really want that outcome. |
Anonymous
Did you ever have a child in ACPS? Just curious. |