2 things actually matter in schools

Competent teachers (Which are a mixed bag across any school)

And SES status

Western MoCo and WOTP DCPS schools are both high income so the only variable is whether teachers are competent which is a wash in any school

Bottom line there is no difference between Western MoCo and WOTP DCPS

Anonymous wrote:All I know is that my white upper-middle-class first grader attends a DC public school that does not appear on your list and is overwhelmingly disadvantaged and is reading and doing math three grade levels ahead. And this learning is going on in the school, not at my house!

Test scores don’t tell nearly the whole story.

Same. My DC attended one of the schools near the bottom of that list, scores 5 across the board on PARCC, and 99th percentile on high school admissions tests. All of it came from school and DC's own natural smarts.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

At the elementary school level perhaps yes. And most of the DCPS schools you are listing are the wealthy suburban ones, not the norm.

But anyway, DCPS breaks down at the MS and HS levels. Do the comparison between MCPS and DCPS there and it's not very favorable to DCPS.

That is a clueless way to look at schools. If you think a smart kid at Deal is learning less and will be disadvantaged compared to a smart kid at Pyle, that just means you don't know anything about either school beyond one aggregated set of test scores. Same for high schools.

All I know is that my white upper-middle-class first grader attends a DC public school that does not appear on your list and is overwhelmingly disadvantaged and is reading and doing math three grade levels ahead. And this learning is going on in the school, not at my house!

Test scores don’t tell nearly the whole story.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

At the elementary school level perhaps yes. And most of the DCPS schools you are listing are the wealthy suburban ones, not the norm.

But anyway, DCPS breaks down at the MS and HS levels. Do the comparison between MCPS and DCPS there and it's not very favorable to DCPS.

The prior reference was that a poster said any MOCO elementary school would kick the snot out of Janney etc.

Anonymous wrote:OP, you should have stopped after your first paragraph. Instead you follow up with a comparison of schools. How is that not pitting each against the others? Your thread should be deleted too.

But there are still many people who want to say that any X school can kick the snot out of Y school. They should then reference this data.

Anonymous wrote:The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

Agree. And a year or two ago some statistics type poster posted the numbers to show that the scores track demographics across all schools, which means you kid will have the same result on that test no matter which school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

At the elementary school level perhaps yes. And most of the DCPS schools you are listing are the wealthy suburban ones, not the norm.

But anyway, DCPS breaks down at the MS and HS levels. Do the comparison between MCPS and DCPS there and it's not very favorable to DCPS.

That's a really clueless take. DCPS has 24K students in K-5 and 7500 in 6-8. That's an average of 6K/grade level in ES and 2500/grade level in MS.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

At the elementary school level perhaps yes. And most of the DCPS schools you are listing are the wealthy suburban ones, not the norm.

But anyway, DCPS breaks down at the MS and HS levels. Do the comparison between MCPS and DCPS there and it's not very favorable to DCPS.

But the white wealthy demographic still continues to perform well in middle and high school in DCPS. It's just that the poorer kids attend the same schools at that point, which leads to lower averages.

Basically, poor kids still do poorly, and rich kids still do well throughout school. Not the greatest, but the demographics explain a lot more than any particular school system, pedagogical approach, or public vs. private do.

Anonymous wrote:The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

At the elementary school level perhaps yes. And most of the DCPS schools you are listing are the wealthy suburban ones, not the norm.

But anyway, DCPS breaks down at the MS and HS levels. Do the comparison between MCPS and DCPS there and it's not very favorable to DCPS.

OP, you should have stopped after your first paragraph. Instead you follow up with a comparison of schools. How is that not pitting each against the others? Your thread should be deleted too.

Anonymous wrote:Test scores reflect demographics. Schools with lots of rich white and Asian kids do well. If your kid is from a similar background, they'll do about the same in DC or MD schools.
The end.

PP, forgive the weird formatting.

Oh, and for us black and Latino parents, it's a more nuanced decision, since we need to root out the relevant scores for our demographics, as there's often a big disparity with overall scores.

The answer is: They are all good schools. The end.

Test scores reflect demographics. Schools with lots of rich white and Asian kids do well. If your kid is from a similar background, they'll do about the same in DC or MD schools.
The end.

The 'Janney' thread got deleted by the moderator and rightfully so. I do wonder if we can have a serious discussion about why we must pit the schools against one another? There are great schools in DC and in MD. Any time you have a school with a very wealthy student population, is there any doubt it will succeed?

Here are the average PARCC scores (average math and ELA) for WOTP DCPS schools and the MoCo schools that another poster mentioned by grade:

3rd Grade Avg
Coldspring ES 91.25
Bannockburn 87.35
Ross (DC) 85.4
Key (DC) 82.85
Carderock ES 82.45
Hyde (DC) 82.1
Bradley Hills 80.65
Lafayette (DC) 76.8
Janney (DC) 75.85
Clarksburg ES 74.15
Mann (DC) 74.15
Bethesda Elementary 73
Stoddert (DC) 72.35
Oyster (DC) 68.55
Murch (DC) 65.3
Eaton (DC) 62.7
Belmont 61.1
College Gardens 58.6

4th Grade Avg
Stoddert (DC) 92.35
Coldspring ES 90.15
Bannockburn 90
Ross (DC) 90
Carderock ES 88.25
Janney (DC) 84.65
Mann (DC) 80.25
Eaton (DC) 79.9
Lafayette (DC) 79.8
Bradley Hills 77.1
Key (DC) 71
Murch (DC) 70.6
Belmont 70.35
Clarksburg ES 63.6
Oyster (DC) 62.95
Hyde (DC) 62.1
College Gardens 56.6
Bethesda Elementary 55.1


5th Grade Avg
Coldspring ES 93.1
Bannockburn 90
Carderock ES 82.1
Janney (DC) 81.45
Key (DC) 75
Ross (DC) 75
Lafayette (DC) 74.2
Eaton (DC) 73.85
Stoddert (DC) 73.35
Mann (DC) 71.3
Bradley Hills 70.7
Oyster (DC) 69.7
Hyde (DC) 64
Murch (DC) 62.5
Bethesda Elementary 59.8
Belmont 59.45
College Gardens 50.35
Clarksburg ES 47.05

Discuss.