Reply to which school is ranked higher Island CREEK or KINGS GLEN?

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Reply to "which school is ranked higher Island CREEK or KINGS GLEN?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP -- not sure what your priorities are.  I know ICES very well.  Don't know Kings Park other than what is on its profile page.  There is a notable difference in that Kings Park is K-3rd.  ICES is K-6th (actually, they have pre-school, but that is for kids with special needs).  Size wise, KP is a little smaller, but given that they only go to 3rd grade, they must have twice as many kids in each grade level (i.e. ICES has roughly 100 kids per grade level.  KP has almost 200 in each grade).

KP has a larger Latino population and with that is a larger ESOL population.  Given those challenges, I would say that it's doing pretty well with its test scores.  Note that the Great School rating (based on composite test scores) will only have the 3rd graders contributing to that score for KP.  For Island Creek, the 3rd-6th graders are contributing to the Great Schools overall rating.

KP also has a larger Free/Reduced Meals population.  Doesn't mean that the school is bad.  Just making that notation.

I can speak in more detail about ICES.  The school is very diverse (racially), but economically pretty homogenous.  You don't have a sense that there are rich kids and poor kids.  (The housing in the area is the main reason for that.)  The PTA at ICES has gotten better in the last year.  Looks like KP/Kings Glen PTA is also offering a lot of after school classes.

There isn't a lot of drama at ICES.... people are not especially competitive or driven to chase AAP.  People are generally happy with the school and admin.  ... Although I believe they could step it up a notch.  They do have adv. math for 3-6th.  There has been a full time AART.  [b]They do not separate kids for subjects.  The principal is insistent on one-teacher-one-kid.  I'm not a fan of that model, but they seem to think it is important for the kid/teacher relationship.  I'd prefer that they divide kids out and have the teacher teach a whole class of similar-ability kids.  [/b]I think the teachers are generally happy with the admin.

While I'm not familiar with KP directly, I think the biggest difference for families may be the area -- the age of the housing, the access to metro/trails/retail.  The Kingstowne area has been a plus for us -- not so densely populated as some areas of the county, not so cut-throat/competitive, easy to get around to the things you need.

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I love the [b]entitlement[/b] to weigh in on instructional models about which you know very little and about which there is no research to support.  :roll: [/quote]???

I believe I am entitled to my opinion.  I said, "I'm not a fan" of that philosophy.  I know that other ES in FCPS do it differently starting in 1st grade.  I much prefer a system where kids are grouped together by where they are and then assigned to a teacher who is able to teach to their level for the entire class period.  As it is, a teacher may have to teach 3-5 different lessons for each subject -- that means each child is only getting 1/3 to 1/5th of the teacher's time b/c she has to divide it to make sure she is teaching to each group.  In lower grades, that meant my kid got a small group time with the teacher for 15 min. PER WEEK.  If kids were separated into larger ability groups (across the grade level) and then went to Ms. X for their language arts class, Ms. X could spend the entire 75 min. working with the group that is roughly on the same level.

As an aside -- Isn't this entire forum (and the AAP forum) based on parents weighing in on instructional models that they observe being used on their children?

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