Wood MS feeding into Rockville HS

[Anonymous]

Hello, I live Rockville HS cluster and am baffled about why Rockville HS is ranked a 4 out 10, and Manor Woods Middle School is a 7 out of 10, if it's the ONLY feeder school into Rockville HS. Same kids, different school levels. I'd understand if the difference was 1 or 2 (out of 10) but it's a larger difference of "3 out of 10" here. Am I missing something?
Additionally, why is Rockville HS ranked so badly? The area has great elementary schools, a great middle school and good community (Aspen Hill). Do people see Rockville HS improving?

[Anonymous]

Do you mean Earle B Wood MS? Not Manor Woods?

Take the rankings with a grain of salt. Rockville HS has a high FARMs rate so the test scores are going to reflect that.

It's one of the smaller HS in the county, and has IB diploma program if your kid is interested.

[Anonymous]

Maybe families do privagte for HS. I live in Rockville and do not think of it as a bad school. I think of it as a smaller HS which is nice for MoCo.

[Anonymous]

Basically the high school has been more academically successful with it’s groups than the middle school is. However, it is probably comparing apples to oranges. The courses, assessments, and eval system is different.

[Anonymous]

It’s easier to get into the HS magnet program versus the MS magnet program. Simply because there are more seats.

So, you have kids who attend Wood simply because they are staying in the cluster until they can apply for HS magnets (like RM IB).

Also, a good number of kids, esp from Flower Valley attend Good Counsel.

[Anonymous]

We live in the cluster and most people I know seems reasonably happy with Rockville. I hear praise for the sense of community a lot given that it’s a smaller school.

[Anonymous]

It's Earle B Wood middle school that feeds to Rockville High School. And Wood middle school has a '5' rating on great schools.

[Anonymous]

Rockville also has the Learning for Independence program and Wood does not (the LFI MS feeder program is at Cabin John). Those kids are not on diploma track and tend to make very gradual progress (and it also tends to be higher minority and FARMS for whatever reason) so that might ding some components of the score just enough. I don't know, though, as LFI is not very large.