Reply to Reason to transfer school in APS?

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Reason to transfer school in APS?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hello Barcroft neighbor. Your children will not really have any "choice" school options. ATS has only a few slots a year. Barcroft no longer has enough seats for any more than siblings and a couple people off the wait list. This year some parents managed to get transferred to Key, discovery and Jamestown because the south Arlington school situation is unacceptable. But that won't last. Campbell is almost as poor as Barcroft.

barcroft is not a bad school, but it is not a good one either. Almost 70 percent of the school is poor.  So, it is not a racial issue, although most but not all of those kids are Latino. They are from poorer families and carry all the baggage being poor carries in arlington. So, your child's teachers will be working to get them to learn despite their lack of home resources. If your child gets into the gifted program, you are fine. If your kid has special needs, good luck. If your kid is average, your kid will be overlooked. I have heard this from most parents who are willing to be honest. And, the PTA resources are low all because the poorer parents do not get involved and they certainly don't have money to spare. The lack of PTA support is STARK in comparison to weathier north arlington schools.

That said, if your children are racial minorities, they would stand out in many north Arlington schools that are overwhelmingly white. That is not good either.

Test scores were up for some of the poorer kids in many south arlington schools. But, there has been huge pressure to get them up. And, for the first time this year kids can retake them! So, the scores cannot be compared to prior years. No one is talking about that. White kids scored worse in many south arlington scools, Barcroft in particular. So, what does that tell you? Not everything, but something and the lower scores were across the board.

If you want to get involved in this county's push to make south Arlington home to every poorer family in the county, there are folks trying to stop it.  There is a group trying to stop all affordable housing as a totally unrealistic use of scarce county funds. Another group mentioned earlier, card I believe, that seems to support affordable housing as long as it is dispersed around the county (like real diversity). And by the way, it the affordable housing that makes schools like Barcroft poor despite the wealth of the two neighborhoods that feed into it (alcova heights and Barcroft).

In case you care about my kids. I sent them to Barcroft and pulled them out after a year. There was little learning going on, only catch up and discipline. They go to a private school and are thriving. I weighed moving versus private. Our house is custom and no one wanted to move. I moved here from another area and did not do my school research. [/quote]

Thank you for your insight and opinion!  I'm going to bookmark this and read it again.  We know Alcova Heights, our neighbors, it is such a nice family neighborhood, nice houses, and lots of custom and 1 Million plus homes actually...  that's why I've been confused about the statistics of the school...  May I ask which private school you are sending your kids to?  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics