Reply to House budget of $450k. Looking for good schools. Where to buy?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]As long as there are apartment units feeding into Edison (think Rose Hill and along Franconia Rd.) or into Hayfield (think Lorton along Rt. 1) -- there will always be significant diversity of color, wealth, and academic motivation.  That is not going to change until the housing style changes.  The same can be said for South Lakes and Herndon.  The HS that don't have any apartments feeding into them will always be wealthier and whiter and have higher scores.

If you look at the test scores for Twain MS, Clermont, Island Creek, Lorton Station, and Hayfield Elementary -- you see that at each school, the white and asian kids have SOL pass rates that are an 8 or 9 out of 10 (compared to all kids in the state).  That's comparable to many of the schools that people are always bragging about.  Hayfield ES and Island Creek ES are the "best" (highest scoring, highest income, lowest FARMS) schools that feed into Hayfield HS.  The other schools that feed into it have much higher FARMS rates and the black and hispanic pass rates are "3" or "4" out of 10 (meaning they are lower than the average pass rate across the state).  It's going to pull the average passing rate down.  It doesn't mean that the school is bad.  It's really about the types of housing (and therefore wealth or lack of wealth) that feed into a school.

[b]Mix of housing = mixed bag of achievement (test scores).[/quote][/b]

And that would affect smart kids how?  This constant focus on test scores as a measure of how your kids will do in a school is really ridiculous.   I suspect my son would have gotten a near-perfect score on the SAT no matter where he went.  He also knows a senior from Edison who is going to Harvard --- which rejected plenty of his TJ friends.

Go see the schools you're interested in. Talk to the teachers.  Can you picture your child there?   So many DCUM posters are such lemmings they can only appreciate a school when some magazine ranks it and it's bursting at the seams from overcrowding.  When we moved here nearly 10 years ago, people didn't give our elementary school a second thought.  It's now an AAP center and *surprise* house prices have gone up as people rush to move to the neighborhood.  Things change here really quickly and many schools have outpaced their supposedly bad reputations. Some of the best situations in terms of teaching and class size are now at schools well-outside of popular areas like McLean or Vienna.   But the only way you're going to find that out is to go there and investigate for yourself.

No school is perfect -- two of the highest rated schools in the area Langley and Woods are also leading FCPS in suicides.    [/quote]

I'm the PP you quoted -- I think we are in agreement.  I don't think it affects my kids to go to a HS that has a mixed bag of achievement.  I think people get swept away by the composite scores of schools as though it is some source team pride (kind of like "my college's team won the NCAA championship so I must be something special... never mind that I had nothing to do with it and the championship has nothing to do with the quality of my education... but hey -- aren't we great.)  [/quote]

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