Reply to If AP is more popular/better/more flexible, why does FCPS put IB in all the lower-ranked schools?

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Reply to "If AP is more popular/better/more flexible, why does FCPS put IB in all the lower-ranked schools?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
[quote]If you live in an IB school district, you can transfer to an AP school - and vice versa. It is nice to have options.

Our AP option is a much lower performing school. My kids will be sticking with IB.

That is very rarely the case in FCPS. Maybe if you are zoned for Marshall and Falls Church is your only AP option. Otherwise the AP schools are usually more sought after. Look at all the transfers out of Annandale, Lee and Mount Vernon.

You nailed it. We're zoned for Marshall and definitely don't want Falls Church. We're about a half mile closer to Falls Church than we are to McLean. We're fortunate that Marshall is a great school, but I wish we had a better AP option.

[b]The irony here is that Marshall became known as a much better school AFTER it introduced the IB program[/b]. [/quote]
Actually, it is your comment that is ironical. The reason Marshall is now known as being better is because of the scenario above: Falls Church HS is widely thought to be sub-par, and many people would rather send their kids somewhere else. When Marshall became IB, that gave families an option to avoid Falls Church HS: they could pupil-place at Marshall for IB instead. That has helped channel some of the better students away from Falls Church and toward Marshall. That's why Marshall's standing has improved, not because of the IB program.

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Marshall's reputation improved as the neighborhoods that feed into it rose in price. I graduated from Marshall in the mid 90s and it was a great school. I had some of the most dedicated and passionate teachers I have ever encountered and it was an overall great experience. At the time, the media was hell bent on portraying it as a gang-ridden school for some reason, but that simply wasn't true. There were several wannabe gang types that liked to graffiti gang names and act tough, and one fight in my four years there that some claimed was "gang related" but it lasted about 30 seconds before the admin broke it up and no one was even notably injured. 
As people started tearing down pimmit hills ramblers to build their McMansions, tysons became more developed, and the area began to draw a more affluent crowd, the reputation of Marshall began to improve. [/quote]

There was a gang-related murder of a teenager in the Marshall parking lot in 1998.  The victim was a former Marshall student then attending Pimmit Hills Alternative and, ironically, it happened at Marshall because he'd thought he'd be safer on the school grounds.  I don't think you can blame the press for covering that incident.

We had a child at Marshall who graduated several years ago.  Jay Pearson gets the credit in our book for turning the place around.  He literally cleaned the place up and held the teachers, some of whom were just going through the motions and waiting to retire, to higher standards.  We moved, and I don't know much about his successor, but hopefully he will maintain Jay's high standards.[/quote]

I grew up in a neighborhood zoned for Marshall and yes, the neighborhood kids used to talk about how "dangerous" it was as if it gave them street cred in our totally normal, upper middle class neighborhood. It was all talk though. I graduated in mid 2000 and never saw anything untoward. I also did IB and feel like it prepared me incredibly well for the rigor of college. It's only getting better and better as a school.[/quote]

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