Reply to What happened to Quince Orchard's USNews Rankings?

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Reply to "What happened to Quince Orchard's USNews Rankings? "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Both of these schools have a good peer group as do most schools in the area.  Buy a house where you want to live..  Your kids are 10 years from high school, there is no guarantee that anything about these schools will be the same when they are looking to attend.[/quote]

When we moved 10 years ago, QO was a great school so we intentionally stayed in-bounds once we left the Kentlands. However, it now is very sports oriented (much more so than academic) as another person noted. FARMs has gone up to 30% which brings its own challenges, but test scores certainly haven’t been improving and chronic absenteeism is a problem. For the average student, Quince Orchard will be fine. One of my kids at Qo simply isn’t challenged academically and doesn’t have many peers who are as motivated as him like you’ll find at the W schools. Other kid, average academics, is doing just fine. Most teachers are good, admin seems to be preoccupied with sports and reducing inequities (which they haven’t done a good job of) while high achievers are left in the dark, taking dumbed down AP courses. The push for AP is WAY too much, it becomes as though “everyone take AP,” which diminishes rigor and ultimately AP scores[/quote]

OP again, This is by far and away the most helpful post on this thread, thank you very much for the clear picture of what has been going on! I'd seen praises of QO by posts in 2011-2015 and it makes sense the rankings went down if the focus has gone primarily to athletics. I read elsewhere about the chronic absenteeism which is definitely questionable. I've heard the whole "admin seems to be preoccupied with sports and reducing inequities, leaving high achievers in the dark" seems to be a concern with all MCPS, which I guess we will just deal with since we probably don't have the funds for 12 years of private school. What you mentioned about everyone being pushed to do AP also makes sense as I noticed that Usnews reported a whopping 80% of students took one AP test but only 50% passed, which would indicate approximately 1/3 of all students in AP classes can't handle the material.

It seems like the "wait and move if necessary" poster is probably wise since high achieving students would likely flourish more at the W schools, but average kids could suffer from confidence or mental health issues at W schools. [/quote]

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