Reply to Rank the Top 10 NoVa High Schools

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I came up with a meta ranking, based on a composite of SAT scores, Great Schools, US News, School Digger, and the Washington Post Challenge Index.  The top 10 are:

TJ
McLean
Langley 
George Mason
Oakton
Yorktown
Woodson
West Springfield
Robinson
Madison

(followed by Marshall, Lake Braddock, Chantilly, and W-L).

[/quote]

And for those who want to see the correlation with FARMS:

TJ - 1.8%
McLean - 8.7%
Langley - 1.8%
George Mason - 8.5%
Oakton - 12.8%
Yorktown - 14.6%
Woodson - 11.7%
West Springfield - 12.9%
Robinson - 10.7%
Madison - 10.4%
Marshall - 17.7%
Lake Braddock - 16.3%
Chantilly - 16.9%
W-L  - 34.2%[/quote]

Right. I hope no one is delusional enough to think there’s anything inherently good about these schools. You take the kids from Langley and stick them in Mount Vernon and Mount Vernon goes from the worst school to the best school, and vice versa. It’s  all about the student and the family they come from. The actual schools don’t make a difference. [/quote]

Yes, the students, teachers, and surrounding communities make a bigger difference than buildings.  Few would suggest otherwise, although better physical plants may contribute at the margins to selecting a neighborhood.[/quote]

Right, I’m including the teachers, staff, etc., not just the buildings. The teachers at Stuart aren’t any better or worse than the ones at Langley. They all work for FCPS and follow the same curriculum. There are good teachers, counselors, etc. as well as bad ones at every school and they all come and go. So what I meant is that if you literally took the kids from Langley and put them in Stuart with the Stuart teachers, staff, surrounding community, Stuart would become a top ten school. [/quote]

That’s a hypothesis with a lot of assumptions, some clearly incorrect.  Neither the curriculum nor the pace at which it is followed is uniform among NoVa high schools. Nor is teacher recruitment, satisfaction, or retention.  It seems that perhaps all you really want to establish is that there are some good teachers and administrators in lower-rated schools, and again few would dispute that.  [/quote]

I agree that teacher satisfaction, etc. are not the same at every school. For example, the admin plays a huge part in that. My point is that the teachers at the top performing schools aren’t superior to the teachers at lower performing schools. Do you disagree?

What makes a school high performing isn’t how good the teachers are, it’s the number of students who attend that school who would thrive in just about any school because of their family background. A kid who’s going to get a 1500 SAT at a top school isn’t going to get a much lower score if they attended a lower ranked school. 
[/quote]

Teachers at higher-performing schools are generally less stressed, less likely to be constantly monitored to make sure their students are on track to pass the SOLs, and able to teach at an accelerated pace.  Students are also more likely to do well on SATs and other standardized tests if they’ve been in an environment for years where most of their peers are strong academically, and the teachers can teach at a faster clip and with fewer distractions. Of course, there are some teachers who get more satisfaction from teaching kids who come from less privileged backgrounds, and some are quite vocal about it, but in the aggregate they’ll burn out sooner.

You may disagree, but the bulk of the evidence seems to support this view. If you were right, you’d see more parents trying to game the system by moving to neighborhoods zoned for schools like Lee so their kids could “do just as well,” yet stand out more. That very rarely happens, as much as you might prefer otherwise. [/quote]

Are you familiar with teaching in FCPS?  I’m not asking to be snarky but as a genuine question. Teachers at high performing schools are stressed out by constant demands from helicoptor parents who want private school attention from a public school teacher. That’s the flip side to parents who invest a lot in their kids’ schooling and have the time to do so. Teachers at wealthy schools face pressure that goes beyond just passing SOLs.  And let’s be honest. Even the lowest performing schools in FCPS isn’t like teaching in inner city Chicago. Is there evidence that teacher turnover at high performing schools are noticeably lower?  I’m not aware of any.

There are a lot of factors that go into choosing a home. People generally choose to live around people that are “like them.” A wealthy family is much more likely to live in McLean district than Lee district for example, even if they send their kids to private school. I do agree that perceived school quality plays a big role in real estate prices, of course.  But a lot of that is a self-fulfilling prophesy. And some of it is just parents who mean well doing as much as they can, even if there’s no evidence of it making much of a didference, which also keeps after school tutoring for elementary school kids in business.

I really don’t have a horse in the race. I live in a “good” school district because it works well for our commutes.  [/quote]

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