Reply to Anyone care to compare Woodson, Lake Braddock, and West Springfield for me?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're looking at homes that feed to these schools and I'm wondering how they compare. I think they are all great schools, but I'd like to know some details behind the statistics. For instance, Woodson has better test scores - is it way more competitive than LB and WS? That scares me a bit. Is LB just too big? Are any known for particularly good programs? I've heard LB has a fantastic music program, what about the others? For the DC area, we don't make a ton of money (about $120,000 HHI) - are our kids going to be totally out of place at any of these schools?

Thanks for any and all info! I wish I had a crystal ball to tell me which school would end up working best for my sons![/quote]

I bet they'd all be fine and that you wouldn't feel out of place in any of those communities.   In terms of size, as you probably know, LB is a very big secondary school (around 2600 students in 9-12 and an additional 1450 in 7-8), West Springfield HS has around 2300 students and Woodson HS has about 2100.

Woodson has higher test scores because it draws almost entirely from SFH neighborhoods.  In Fairfax, at least, the reality is that test scores go down when more students come from low-income homes, which usually means multi-family units in the county.   Lots of motivated students at each of these schools.

If I were moving into the area, and my kids were already HS age, I would probably pick LB or WS because they have more military families and more new students every year.  Woodson has a somewhat clique-ier (is that a word?) reputation.  On the other hand, if your kids were younger, they'd have plenty of time to make friends.  One other consideration, however, might be that Woodson was recently renovated, whereas West Springfield is in lousy hysical condition right now and isn't going to be renovated for a few more years.

Hope that helps.

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