Reply to Does anyone here actually send their kid to Hayfield/Edison/West Potomac/5 or lower GS high schools?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Does anyone here actually send their kid to Hayfield/Edison/West Potomac/5 or lower GS high schools?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We're zoned for Lee HS - a 3 on Great Schools. Count your blessings![/quote]

I send my kids to Lee and they are doing fine. Great Schools is not a good source to use. And it is a self fulfilling prophecy - the more educated focused families avoid a school the worse it becomes.

If that continues then FCPS might as well write off Lee, Annandale, Falls Church, Stuart, Mt. Vernon, and West Potomac. Herndon, South Lakes, Westfield, Edison, and Hayfield are all fives right now, so they may be doomed as well. Once a school reaches a certain point, it is hard to turn it around. Pay close attention to the fact that I just named 11 of the 24 regular high schools in FCPS. That means that almost half of the high schools score a five or below on Great Schools.

I have decided people around here are crazy. FCPS provides excellent resources and opportunities at all of its high schools. Do some schools have opportunities that others do not? Sure. Do some schools have more successful football teams or bands? Sure. Are some schools richer than the others? Obviously. FCPS and the Fairfax Board of Supervisors should be held accountable for concentrating poverty, particularly at the five lowest rated schools. Still, if your child is motivated they should do fine at any of the FCPS high schools. And if your student easily finds trouble, they will find it at any of the FCPS high schools.

Lee, the smallest high school in the county, is 1100 students smaller than Lake Braddock (the largest). That is 275 more kids per grade at Lake Braddock. Considering that each school only has one soccer team, or basketball team, or school play, where do you think a student would have more opportunity to participate? Obviously that shows the biggest difference in the county, but the county looks to average about 2250 kids per high school. That is close to 500 students more than Lee currently has. 125 more per grade.

So I would ask everybody around here to take a deep breath and stop abandoning schools because of what you read on the internet. I would at least ask, that before you move or transfer away from your school, that you speak with the Principal, the PTSA, and parents of recent graduates (or the graduates themselves).[/quote]

I don't think that many people really obsess about GS scores.  I think they do avoid high school pyramids in FCPS if the area doesn't seem to be improving and there are no signs that FCPS (or the School Board) is actively looking for ways to shore up the schools.

By those standards, the pyramids most at-risk in FCPS are probably Annandale, Lee and Mount Vernon, not your entire group of 11 schools.  People can see that FCPS moved single-family neighborhood after single-family neighborhood out of Annandale, and turned Poe MS into the county's poorest middle school.  They can see that FCPS isn't lifting a finger to move kids to under-enrolled Mount Vernon from over-crowded West Potomac.  They can see that central Springfield still looks rundown and that FCPS never raises the prospect of moving kids from West Springfield to Lee.

Compare that to Falls Church, where the Mosaic District was built and where people priced out of Arlington are moving, or Hayfield, where FCPS actually moved kids back to the school after they realized they'd previously moved too many kids to South County.  It sends a very different signal about where the pyramid is headed. [/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