Reply to Woodson, Lake Braddock, West Springfield experiences

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence.  Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.[/quote]

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.[/quote]

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options). [/quote]

OP here. I don't particularly care about academic rigor in the comparison of these specific schools as I actually don't necessarily want the "best of the best" academically speaking. Reasonably good is good enough to me. I have looked at the data for academics for the three schools and they are fine to me.

School culture matters a lot to me. I am interested in any responses to the PP who brought up bullying, fights, etc. - not just for the highschools, but also for their corresponding middle schools (perhaps particularly for the middle schools - Frost, Iriving, Lake Braddock Middle). [/quote]

We're zoned for WSHS and moved over to this area from the Edison pyramid because I wanted my kid at WS, but honestly LBSS is basically the same. For Irving, the middle school, the worst I've heard is that there is a contingent of kids (mostly boys) who go to the nearby strip mall after school and act like idiots for about an hour after school. Moms and mall shop owners complain about it from time to time on our WS moms Facebook group.  And while my kid won't be at Irving until next year, another mom friend in my neighborhood who has a 7th grader at Irving said its actually pretty good and the kids all know the kids who go over to that mall. Sorry I don't have first-hand experience of Irving yet. [/quote]

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