Stats about white students in DCPS being in top nationwide?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

+1 We live in the city to maximize convenience and family time - most of which we spend doing leisurely activities you can do almost anywhere. If we worked in the burbs we'd move to the burbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

Try living in Fairfax, Sterling or Gaithersburg and then get back to us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

Not sure what "big yards" is supposed to do for them. And kids in the burbs don't "run around freely", at least none of my relatives' or in-laws' kids do. Hell, my nephew has to be driven to school by his mother. They leave early and sit in a line of cars waiting for the school staff to shepherd them into the building. If they don't arrive extra early, then they're at the end of the line, and have to wait longer. So they make sure they get to the school 40 minutes early and sit there idling. In line. It sounds like Hell on Earth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. So why are people always claiming that MoCo and N. Arlington are so much better? Though true those are statewide scores...can we see a county breakdown

White kids in DC are overwhelmingly from wealthy educated families. They will do well anywhere. It's teaching the rest of the kids that shows how strong a school system is. Also standardized tests aren't everything. Those white kids in DC may be passing at a higher rate than their counterparts (in everywhere else in the US where there are middle class and poor white kids) but that doesn't mean they are better off in dcps.

blah blah blah blah.

These are important data to refute the very specific group of law firm-type parents who insist that their progeny need to be educated in Bannockburn, Bradley Hills, Somerset, Pyle, Key Science Focus, Williamsburg MS, etc. This data shows that those children do not, in fact, need to flee the District with their white, highly educated parents because, schools.

(this is a different analysis than, say, "name the middle school in the entire region with the best math department.")

I guess if all you care about is whether your kid can do well on a standardized test then you're correct. And I'm sure there are some schools in DC that hold up well to schools in the burbs. But if you really think that your kid is going to get the same level of education at, for example, Brent as your kid would get in Somerset or Falls Church City, you're crazy. Teachers can do so much more with a class made up entirely of wealthy suburban kids than they can with a class made up of some wealthy kids and some really poor kids.

OK, so schools in wealthy suburbs are better than ours. But there are few really poor kids at neighborhood schools like Maury and Brent these days, and the PTAs pay for classroom aides to help them. I you think that your kid is getting a better all around education in Somerset or Falls Church city, you're crazy. Where are the Smithsonian museums and botanical gardens in the suburban hinterland? We walk down to the National Mall in 15 minutes. Where are the local libraries? We walk two minutes to reach ours. Where are the local theatres you can get to in a matter off minutes? We're off to Folger on our bikes. Where are the free military band concerts, the chances to greet lawmakers in local restaurants, the chance to rub shoulders with tourists from all over the world, the outdoor movies, the cultural festivals around the corner in those blah municipalities? Well-educated parents can do much more in rich urban environments and so kids come out ahead.

You are so ridiculous. The rich burbs, be it Chevy Chase or FCC, have their local libraries, they are very nice and teeming with kids, and the fact that some people need to drive to them doesn't negate their presence. Suburbs are full of theaters and parks and multi-ethnic restaurants, and cultural festivals, and whatever you need in DC is just 20 minutes away. Sorry, you come off as a crazy one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

I am a World Bank economist, my husband is a political commentator, we are both foreign and live in Fairfax county.

FYI, if you spoke their language, you would see that senior diplomats and military officers are remarkably dumb.

Those who drive legislative battles in the Senate, as far as I can see, aren't the sharpest tools in the shed, either.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Yes. While the DCUM crowd loves to sing praises to DC's ethnic diversity, the actual truth is that Washington is way less diverse, ethnically speaking, than Maryland and especially than Virginia. Both states are ahead of DC in the percentage of foreign-born, and speakers of languages other than English. The best ethnic restaurants, Saturday heritage programs, foreign-language preschools. temples and mosques, are all in the burbs.

And excellent point about why immigrants move here. Middle-class immigrants, and even working-class ones don't care about the PC lines. They very unapologetically go to where the best schools are. They don't care about walkability and rubbing shoulders with anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Yes. While the DCUM crowd loves to sing praises to DC's ethnic diversity, the actual truth is that Washington is way less diverse, ethnically speaking, than Maryland and especially than Virginia. Both states are ahead of DC in the percentage of foreign-born, and speakers of languages other than English. The best ethnic restaurants, Saturday heritage programs, foreign-language preschools. temples and mosques, are all in the burbs.

And excellent point about why immigrants move here. Middle-class immigrants, and even working-class ones don't care about the PC lines. They very unapologetically go to where the best schools are. They don't care about walkability and rubbing shoulders with anyone.

As with most things, the answer is "it depends." My kid's DCPS classmates speak French, Amharic, and German at home--and that's just what I know of. No shortage of diversity here. I'm sure the same is true of some of the close-in burbs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These results include a sample of all students in DC - DCPS, charter and private.

Nope. From the "state comparisons" page:

State Comparisons provides tables and maps that compare states and jurisdictions based on the average scale scores for selected groups of public school students within a single assessment year, or compare the change in performance between two assessment years.

Private schools also don't require common core testing used as the primary data point to evaluate public schools. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but private schools utilize NAEP testing but are not required to publish scores. Private students do not take an equivalent to the common core tests which have become common for public schools. Public/private data comparisons are not 1:1.

This data is from the NAEP, not related to PARCC (common core test).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Yes. While the DCUM crowd loves to sing praises to DC's ethnic diversity, the actual truth is that Washington is way less diverse, ethnically speaking, than Maryland and especially than Virginia. Both states are ahead of DC in the percentage of foreign-born, and speakers of languages other than English. The best ethnic restaurants, Saturday heritage programs, foreign-language preschools. temples and mosques, are all in the burbs.

And excellent point about why immigrants move here. Middle-class immigrants, and even working-class ones don't care about the PC lines. They very unapologetically go to where the best schools are. They don't care about walkability and rubbing shoulders with anyone.

As with most things, the answer is "it depends." My kid's DCPS classmates speak French, Amharic, and German at home--and that's just what I know of. No shortage of diversity here. I'm sure the same is true of some of the close-in burbs.

PP here. Actually, I know the same is true of some parts of the 'burbs, since I lived there before buying in DC. It's not a competition, folks.

[Anonymous]

PP, ethnic diversity is not a matter of opinion, it's easily measurable. Virginia has twice as many speakers of foreign languages, percentage-wise, as DC. It also has many more foreign languages spoken by its people because Spanish occupies less space in this percentage than in DC.

[Anonymous]

There you go:

85% of District resident are English-speaking. 14% and change are speakers of other languages. Of that number, half are Spanish-speaking. https://apps.mla.org/cgi-shl/docstudio/docs.pl?map_data_results

Let's take Fairfax county now. 64% are English-speaking. A whopping 35% are speakers of other languages. Spanish speakers account for only 13% of that number. The rest are a little bit of everything (that's the actual definition of diversity). https://apps.mla.org/cgi-shl/docstudio/docs.pl?map_data_results

[Anonymous]

I'm sure there's no shortage of education-minded suburban parents, including the highly educated (World Bank economists etc.), who are very involved in their kids' schools. I'm also certain that most suburban middle and high schools are miles ahead of my by-right options academically and, frankly, always will be. But I choose to live in the city with elementary school-age kids mainly because I like to walk or bike where I need, and want, to go - to friends' homes, my office, my kids' school, the National Mall, our church, restaurants, supermarkets, playgrounds, the bank etc. I like going as much as a week without driving my car. I also like to invest in real estate in an area where the upside potential is great - the value of my DC properties has more than doubled in under a decade. Also, I'm a history buff who really likes living surrounded by stunning Victorian architecture. But if school quality was my main concern, I'd live in VA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

Not sure what "big yards" is supposed to do for them. And kids in the burbs don't "run around freely", at least none of my relatives' or in-laws' kids do. Hell, my nephew has to be driven to school by his mother. They leave early and sit in a line of cars waiting for the school staff to shepherd them into the building. If they don't arrive extra early, then they're at the end of the line, and have to wait longer. So they make sure they get to the school 40 minutes early and sit there idling. In line. It sounds like Hell on Earth.

Let me tell you what a "big yard" does for my family. Last night we spent about 1 1/2 hours in our big yard after dinner. My 1 year old wandered around, playing with stones and pebbles and a shovel and bucket, watering the plants, riding his little tricycle, blowing bubbles, watching birds, etc. My 3 year old helped her dad plant a new grape plant, checked to see if her blueberries were still green, played with her brother with the stones, watched a colony of ants carry items to their home...yep nothing particularly valuable about that! Guess we should have taken them to the museum instead. We live pretty far out and can walk to all grade levels of school, so there won't be any idling in a car here.

Look, I've lived in both environments and have enjoyed both. These "_______ is better" arguments are so silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Although not a competition, my neighborhood in DC is very international (lots of diplomats, many kids going to our dcps es are bilingual if not trilingual), so I think that pp is overgeneralizing for all of DC neighborhoods. But on a different note, I am sure that the greater DC metro area is incredibly diverse in general, especially when compared to most other parts of the country.