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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wakefield is fine.  The differences in graduation rates and test scores for white kids (for example) are not statistically significantly lower than those of white kids (for example) at Wash-Lee or Yorktown.  But the perception is there.  And if you spend $700K on a house zoned for a school ranked higher and that house gets re-districted, you are looking at a big hit to your equity.  Nobody really wants that.  as long as the perception that Wakefield is lesser is there, it will affect property values.

That said, I feel like enough white middle-class families are settling in South Arlington that at some point, things should be more balanced.  This is especially likely if Wakefield can do something with immersion or a middle school feeding into it can do some sort of STEM focus.  Then you'll have kids choosing to go there - like they choose to bus all over town to TJ in Fairfax.

here's the thing.  Arlington is not unique.  In every school district in the nation, there are schools with more expensive housing and less expensive housing.  There are schools with more minority kids and fewer minority kids.  I think people just talk about it in Arlington so much because Arlington is so small that it's easy to compare only 3 schools.  It's harder in Fairfax - there you have to talk about entire tiers of high schools.  You have your top tier (Langley, McLean, Woodson, etc.) and your middle tier (Fairfax, Robinson, Lake Braddock) and your lower tier (every Alexandria school, Edison, Stuart, Falls Church.)

Someone's gotta be the 3rd ranked out of 3.  [/quote]

See,I always hear people say that white kids perform equally at Wakefield as they do at the other two, but the info provided by a pp shows that there is a significant difference between white kids at Wakefield (avg. 1569) and at Yorktown and W-L (both in the 1800s). So no, educationally Wakefield does NOT seem just fine.[/quote]

I think too much emphasis is placed on race with these scores.  I think SES, more than race, drives these scores.  In general, more higher SES whites attend WL and Yorktown than Wakefield.  If a higher SES white child stays at Wakefield, they will probably do just as well as if they went to Yorktown, but their scores would be diluted by being averaged with other white kids at Wakefield from lower SES families.  SAT scores can be vastly improved by taking classes or tutors, and by taking it multiple times.  That alone gives kids from families with more resources an advantage.  I have no clue if Wakefield is a good school or not, but the SAT scores aren't all about teacher or school quality.  I see it all the time in my kids' Title I school.  The higher SES kids tend to be the better performers across races.[/quote]

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