Reply to Lookin gto move - which county has better schools Arlington or Fairfax?

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Reply to "Lookin gto move - which county has better schools Arlington or Fairfax?"

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[quote=Anonymous]I agree w/ PPs that there are not significant differences in school quality between the districts.  Where there is variation it is within district based on SES.  Buy based on housing type/commute.

However, there are two notable differences between the districts you should be aware of:

1.  If you will need after-school care it is a lot easier to get into Extended Day in Arlington than to get into SACC in Fairfax.  Long waitlists for SACC so most parents have to make alternate arrangements for a few years.  Extended Day you pretty much will get a spot as long as you register well ahead of the deadline each year.  On the flip side, if you CAN get into SACC, it operates on days when schools are closed which Extended Day does not.

2.  Gifted services is handled differently.  Fairfax has AAP to pull out advanced kids into different schools.  APS handles gifted services via pull-outs at your usual school but, in my experience, that is inconsistent and highly dependent on the quality of the gifted teacher at the school (there's just one "gifted" teacher at our ES - we have a great one now but the prior one didn't seem very good and my kids didn't like her). Both my kids have been ID for gifted services (one in math, one in math and language arts) I've felt that they have been appropriately challenged by differentiation in the classroom combined with the time they spend with the gifted teacher. This has worked fine for us but I know parents who've complained about it and would prefer the AAP model.[/quote]

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