Reply to My massive dilemma about school pyramids - low income vs. more affluent? HELP ME!!

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wakefield Forest is a beautiful neighborhood, the elementary school is walking distance, the pool is great, and the community is really friendly. Those are the concrete, right-now things. Even if the high schools were the exact same caliber right now, it sounds like you're saying your family might be happier there because of everything else the neighborhood offers. There's something to be said for that.

Even if Woodson is a competitive rat-race and stays that way for the next 10 years, that doesn't mean your children would necessarily get sucked into it, any more than they would get pulled into gang life, or whatever the heck people are saying Falls Church HS has. If it were my family, I'd rather they deal with super smart type-A kids than worry they might get knifed in the bathroom because they wore the wrong color to school that day.[/quote]

That's nonsense.  How many kids have you heard of getting knifed in the bathroom at FCHS?

OP, I'd base your move/not move decision on whether you like your house and want to stay there, or would rather be in a different neighborhood with the community that you describe.  I went to Frost and to FCHS.  Granted my experience is many years in the past, and MS and HS are different, but I had a far better experience at FCHS than at Frost.  I'm glad that I had the opportunity to make friends who had different backgrounds than I did and came from different socioeconomic groups.  Yeah, there were moments that were hard and awkward, but I'd argue that's a good thing, not a bad thing.  I certainly think I'm a more well-rounded and productive member of society now because of it.  And I did have a lot of opportunity both academically and in extracurricular activities at FCHS that I'm not sure I would have gotten at Woodson.

If you decide to move, I'm sure your kids will do fine in WF/Frost/Woodson also.  [b]Sometimes we forget that even the worst-performing schools in FFX are far better than the majority of schools in the rest of the country.
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FWIW,  I live in the FCHS pyramid now and look forward to my DD attending (she's in 3rd grade now).  I do wish that they had done the renovations already, though![/quote]

PP, I'm curious--what was it about your experiences at Frost and FCHS that made one better than the other?  
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I felt a lot of pressure to fit in at Frost and found it to be very competitive, both academically and in electives (I was in band and participated in theater also).  There was a lot of cheating at the time and I found that very frustrating.  At FCHS, I felt challenged academically but without the negative pressure I felt at Frost.  It was also very easy to be involved in lots of different activities.  I was in chorus, theater, marching band, swim team, & field hockey.  I wasn't forced to specialized, which was great, and I was able to step up into leadership positions. There were lots of different AP choices available and I got into a good college (W&M) and felt well-prepared for success.  [/quote]

Data to back this up, please.[/quote]

Not the PP, but do you realize how silly you sound? The PP was sharing personal experience.

I guess if you want data, you could check the FCHS website to confirm how many AP courses are indeed offered there.[/quote]

The data comment was aimed at the silly arrogant statement in bold above, not the one right above it. [/quote]

Well, there are obviously many different ways that you could define "better than", and the above was really speaking in generals not specifics, but one example with data supporting it is that the median college readiness index (CRI) as calculated by US News for 2015 was 20.17, and every FCPS high school had a score above that.  There are 30 high schools in Ffx, although 5 are special centers, so really 25 regular HS.  16 were ranked by US News, and 9 did not make the cutoff to be ranked.  However, the methodology used by US News to do the rankings first looks at schools in comparison to others in their state, rather than the country, so for the purposes of supporting the above statement, rankings are not sufficient.  Of the 9 that were not ranked, the CRIs ranged from 27.7 to 61.2, with the average being 45.4, far above the national median.

Given that the comment was pointing out that most likely the PPs children would get a good education in any FCPS high school, its also worth noting that for the 9 non-ranked FCPS HSs, the average IB/AP pass rate was 78%, which would indicate that the kids who are enrolled in advanced coursework are being taught well and succeeding overall.

http://www.usnews.com/pubfiles/best-high-schools-technical-appendix.pdf[/quote]

Thank you, that's very interesting. I would still take exception with the statement that the worst schools in Fairfax County (e.g. CRI= 27.7)  are "far better" than the majority of schools in the rest of the country. The national median = 20.17, which means that "[b]half the sample [/b]for which AP or IB data were available had CRI values[b] higher [/b]than this value", according to the report. 'Slightly better than the national median' would be a more accurate statement.  
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