Reply to Housing prices have gone insane

Forum Index » Real Estate

Reply to "Housing prices have gone insane"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Moco resident here.  NAEP scores for VA 4th in the Nation.  MD scores on NAEP in the 30’s.  Where are you getting that MoCo standards are somehow hirer?  Oh Derek Turner? (MCPS PR rep) More than half of MCPS 4th graders can’t read at grade level.  (Show me 4th grades scores and I’ll show you the number of future college graduates) Just because Maryland and MCPS outspends the country on education doesn’t mean a great education.  So tired of MCPS spin in particular.  [/quote]

[b]Their test scores are lower because their standardized exams are more rigorous and they keep changing. HSA, PARCC, MCAP, etc. it’s hard to compare VS schools with MD schools, because they’re being measured using different standardized exams, but it’s certainly not as hard to be the number 3 school in VS as much as it is to be the number 3 school in Maryland. Maryland has a significantly larger portion of higher performing high schools that compete with each other, VA doesn’t. [/quote][/b]

This is really unconvincing. [/quote]

There is no single magnet in MD that serves as many top-performing kids as TJ.  That's why VA has (for now) the top ranked HS in the country and the top-ranked school in MD (Poolesville) is #90, according to US News.

If Fairfax switches to a lottery for TJ, and more of the higher-performing kids end up at their base schools, VA will no longer have the #1 school in the country, but its top neighborhood schools will be ranked higher.  Even under the current system for TJ, Langley and McLean HS in NoVa had more National Merit Semifinalists for the Class of 2021 than either B-CC and Walt Whitman, with the same cut-off (South River HS in Anne Arundel did not have any).   Howard County has one powerhouse (Centennial HS), but again the top neighborhood high schools in NoVa would be on par with Centennial if they weren't losing as many kids to TJ.

PP seems to be committed to the idea that the outer suburbs have the best schools and offer the most value for the money, but they are less convenient for most commuters and the schools aren't clearly better, even when they are less diverse.  McLean HS, for example, has more low-income kids than South River HS, and yet the overall US News ranking (98.67) is higher than at South River (94.03).  [/quote]

TJ is an outlier. The magnets in Maryland are housed at mainstream high schools and share a school with general-ed students, whereas TJ is entirely dedicated as a magnet school.

Also, using National Merit Semifinalists is ridiculous because there’s some years where some schools have 10 and the next year they will only have 3. In one of the earlier 2010 years, South River had a lot, and two of them made it into the finalist round and got selected. Walt Whitman only had 9 for 2021, even though they had 13 for 2020. The  only metric used for National Merit Finalist is PSAT scores, and of all the standardized tests out there, SATs and PSATs are the most heavily correlated with SES. South River HS students are on average not as high SES as students at schools in inner burbs. The bulk of South River students are split evenly between affluent/upper-middle-class/middle-class. At McLean, there are hardly any middle-class students, it’s almost exclusively affluent kids. Of course rich and privileged McLean kids, who are getting private tutoring and test prep, are getting best test scores, but that has nothing to do with the quality of the  school itself. It makes sense that the school with less affluent students will have less National Merit Semifinalists, especially considering that a large percentage of the affluence that resides in South River’s attendance area is shipped off to private schools (much like in other AA County feeders as well). Comparing schools in different states is challenging, but it is a fact that when you take NoVa schools out of the equation, VA schools are not that competitive. Even looking at your own metric, far less high schools in VA were represented than in MD in the NMSF. 60% of this year’s Semifinalists were from TJ. VA kids have far less competition when it comes to statewide rankings, national merit, etc. using some bogus USNWR report that is subjective is useless. Plenty of MoCo W schools weren’t even ranked at all by them some years. There has been years when South River (excluding charters) was in the top 10 in MD.

Let’s consider the stats:

- Severna Park HS: 50% of students taking AP classes; South River HS: 50% of students taking an AP class; McLean: 47% taking an AP class
- Severna Park HS: 39% of students taking advanced math; South River HS: 34% of students taking advanced math; McLean HS: 28% of students taking advanced math 
- Severna Park HS: 2% inexperienced teachers; South River HS: 7% inexperienced teachers; McLean HS: 10% inexperienced teachers 
- Severna Park HS: 30 AP courses; South River HS: 25 AP courses; McLean HS: 24 AP classes.

McLean has more inexperienced teachers, less AP classes, less kids in AP classes, and a similar proportion of kids taking advanced math, despite having a student body that’s significantly higher SES than SR/SP. McLean has a median household income of $190,009; Severna Park is $139,754; South River attendance area includes Davidsonville ($159,688), Edgewater ($86,586), Riva ($126,875), and Crofton ($120,462). That doesn’t even account for the fact that much of the wealthy in the South River district opt for private schools. Most of the kids in SR are nowhere near as wealthy as kids in McLean, yet they have a public school with more APs, more experienced teachers, and more kids in advanced classes. McLean truly must be a shithole of a public school if it’s that wealthy and can’t even outpace an upper-middle-class school in Anne Arundel County.  I can trust that if I send my daughter to South River and do what other wealthy parents do (private tutoring/test prep), she will likely come out even better than she would at McLean, because she’d be going to a school with more APs and better teachers. If more wealthy families in the area were sending their kids to South River, McLean would look even worse.

You comment regarding Howard County schools is ignorant. Centennial the only powerhouse? Lol. River Hill, Marriotts Ridge, and even Atholton High School outpaces Bethesda-Chevy Chase and Thomas S. Wootton. I could afford a luxury $1.5M house in all those school districts and within a very good distance from DC/public transportation (excluding Marriotts Ridge).

2020 Semifinalists:

Winston Churchill HS (Montgomery County: 17
Marriotts Ridge HS (Howard County): 15
Langley HS (Fairfax County)/Walt Whitman HS (Montgomery County) *tie*: 13
River Hill HS (Howard County): 12
McLean HS (Fairfax County): 11
Atholton HS/Centennial HS (Howard County) *tie*: 9
Thomas S. Wootton HS (Montgomery County): 7
Howard HS (Howard County): 6
Mount Hebron HS (Howard County)/Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS (Montgomery County) *tie*: 5
Walter Johnson HS (Montgomery County): 4

Some of the above HoCo schools are mainstream public schools with no magnets and with significantly lower SES (Atholton, Howard, Mount Hebron) than many of the MoCo schools they’re trampling.

It’s not about looking for a “good school” within good commuting distance from DC or access to transportation to it for DCUM. They are only looking for living in an area with no race other than white and Asian people, no neighbors with anything less than a masters degree, and no neighbors with an income less than $250,000. That’s the only reason someone would pay $1.5M to live in such a fugly house in such a fugly neighborhood, with pretty mediocre public schools when you compare the student SES with the academic performance. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics