We were considering the same areas years ago when we bought. Kids are still in elementary so not a ton of info to share, but I can share: like it or not, Woodson enjoys a stronger academic reputation than the rest of that group, whatever the reason may be. It also is known for type A parents -- that is where we wound up buying, and I will say that most neighbors are highly educated, but have not picked careers based on high pay: many high ranking feds (State Dept, FDA, Treasury, DOJ) here, plus respected journalists, or senior military.

Woodson has the kid who just won America's Next Top Scientist from 3M, no small feat. They have also won the e-sports state title the past few years, as well as state championships in cross country and maybe volleyball? Terrible football most years we have been here, basketball and swim seem solid. Pretty politically aware school, protests on global issues and a very PC feel among HS kids we know.

Lake Braddock is a perennial football powerhouse, unlike the others you are considering, also dance team may have won some big championships. Have heard of not nice things occasionally for LGBTQ crowd from
jocks, less politically active kids than Woodson for sure. Think it on the whole has weakest academic rep
Of all schools you are considering but also may have beaten TJ in some state science comp within past few years so that would be significant.

Robinson known for IB program, when we bought our realtor said many clients who want strong academics without high pressure environments wind up picking Robinson. Don't hear as much about Robinson in general compared to the others.

Sometimes I think West Springfield seems like the happiest medium of all the places we looked. Strong school for academics, strong school for sports, maybe the most well-rounded? It is an extremely dense military population, honestly would assume 30%, which will impact the student body and your kids with the moves.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does Woodson pyramid really have more fights than Robinson or is that some made up bs? What about the former drug ring at Robinson? Is there somewhere that a person can look to get real stats for the different schools on these sorts of issues?

Neither of them have any notable safety issues.
You can look up Student Behavior and Administrative Response by School on the Virginia DOE website:
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

(I don't know why the link says special education--it's the link to school climate data--must be an error in their website--there are a lot of errors in the current VA DOE website so don't trust it 100%).

Note--they report the raw number of instances of various types of behaviors, but you have to consider it in terms of the size of the school--e.g. a secondary school like Lake Braddock, Robinson or South Lakes are a middle school and high school combined--with over 4k students--whereas other high schools are 1/2-2/3 that size. If you go to the tab by event, you can see the numbers of specific kinds of instances. Also, numbers alone don't tell everything--though--because some schools are stronger at discipline than others--they are more likely to report and give consequences for each thing--whereas other schools let more slide.

Anonymous wrote:Does Woodson pyramid really have more fights than Robinson or is that some made up bs? What about the former drug ring at Robinson? Is there somewhere that a person can look to get real stats for the different schools on these sorts of issues?

Neither of them have any notable safety issues.
You can look up Student Behavior and Administrative Response by School on the Virginia DOE website:
https://www.doe.virginia.gov/data-policy-funding/data-reports/data-collection/special-education

(I don't know why the link says special education--it's the link to school climate data--must be an error in their website--there are a lot of errors in the current VA DOE website so don't trust it 100%).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I personally see Woodson as more in the broad middle pack with Chantilly, LBSS, Robinson, West Springfield, South Lakes, Marshall, Westfield (I may be missing some). Robinson, Marshall and South Lakes being IB schools don't fit in the rankings as neatly as others--average SAT scores at these schools go up and down within 50 points of 1200. All good schools.

This is a completely inaccurate read of the data. For the 3 most recent years that FCPS has reported SAT scores, Woodson scored higher than Madison, whereas West Springfield, Westfield, and South Lakes never scored over 1200.

PP--what I meant was that in this group of schools they are roughly 50 points less than or more than 1200 not that all the schools varied that way. Which puts them to me in a similar category. Woodson may be on the higher end of this middle group, but it doesn't strike me as qualitatively in a higher group.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I personally see Woodson as more in the broad middle pack with Chantilly, LBSS, Robinson, West Springfield, South Lakes, Marshall, Westfield (I may be missing some). Robinson, Marshall and South Lakes being IB schools don't fit in the rankings as neatly as others--average SAT scores at these schools go up and down within 50 points of 1200. All good schools.

This is a completely inaccurate read of the data. For the 3 most recent years that FCPS has reported SAT scores, Woodson scored higher than Madison, whereas West Springfield, Westfield, and South Lakes never scored over 1200.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

I personally see Woodson as more in the broad middle pack with Chantilly, LBSS, Robinson, West Springfield, South Lakes, Marshall, Westfield (I may be missing some). Robinson, Marshall and South Lakes being IB schools don't fit in the rankings as neatly as others--average SAT scores at these schools go up and down within 50 points of 1200. All good schools.

Does Woodson pyramid really have more fights than Robinson or is that some made up bs? What about the former drug ring at Robinson? Is there somewhere that a person can look to get real stats for the different schools on these sorts of issues?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

But Robinson is not close to Woodson in terms of rankings? Isn't Woodson recognized as part of the top 5 in the county (Langley, McLean, Oakton, Madison being the others)?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our DS (currently in college) graduated from WSHS and we never had the sense of it being a very high pressure environment. If a student felt high pressure it would have come from the household, not the school itself.

The same is true at every FCPS high school. The label "pressure cooker" only gets bandied about by parents at some schools - especially West Springfield, Robinson, and Lake Braddock - to take a shot at schools in wealthier areas and suggest their own schools are the "happy medium."

I think the pressure cooker concept comes more from the idea that selective colleges--including in-state publics--consider students within the context of their school for admissions. Wealthier schools tend to have students whose families can invest in their development--they get tutoring when they are getting a B rather than when they are failing, high quality test preparation, outside college counselors etc. to keep up their academic performance and have more robust extracurriculars throughout the lifespan (e.g. played on travel leagues as kids, private music lessons in elementary) that make them more likely to be high achieving in high school. It's not that the high school is the pressure cooker, but the student body you will be compared to is more likely to be.

If everything was based on maximizing the odds of getting into UVA or VT, these same families would be looking at Edison, Hayfield, or Lewis to avoid the competition that exists at West Springfield, Robinson, and Lake Braddock.

But it isn't, and they don't. Instead, they live in the West Springfield/Burke area, take pot shots at wealthier schools as "pressure cookers," and put down poorer schools as gang-ridden or too violent. It's very much about suggesting that the porridge is just the right temperature at their schools, and too hot/too cold elsewhere, and little else. It's how the DCUM game is played.

This poster DCUMs

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Here we go again.

This is a variant on the “pressure cooker” nonsense - the argument that parents in the Woodson pyramid are pushy and foisting TJ on their kids, whereas the LB/Robinson/WS families are more chill - but, by the way, it actually works out better for college admissions because your kid will somehow stand out more at these less competitive schools.

It’s kind of silly when you reflect on just how large most of these schools are. If anything, Woodson is a bit smaller than the other three.

I’d just go with the house you like and not worry too much about the schools (with the caveat that most do prefer AP over IB, which is the main advanced program at Robinson).

WSHS pyramid (with sangster) has the highest military population outside of fort belvoir.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

OP here. I don't particularly care about academic rigor in the comparison of these specific schools as I actually don't necessarily want the "best of the best" academically speaking. Reasonably good is good enough to me. I have looked at the data for academics for the three schools and they are fine to me.

School culture matters a lot to me. I am interested in any responses to the PP who brought up bullying, fights, etc. - not just for the highschools, but also for their corresponding middle schools (perhaps particularly for the middle schools - Frost, Iriving, Lake Braddock Middle).

We're zoned for WSHS and moved over to this area from the Edison pyramid because I wanted my kid at WS, but honestly LBSS is basically the same. For Irving, the middle school, the worst I've heard is that there is a contingent of kids (mostly boys) who go to the nearby strip mall after school and act like idiots for about an hour after school. Moms and mall shop owners complain about it from time to time on our WS moms Facebook group. And while my kid won't be at Irving until next year, another mom friend in my neighborhood who has a 7th grader at Irving said its actually pretty good and the kids all know the kids who go over to that mall. Sorry I don't have first-hand experience of Irving yet.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

No, my kid took all their IB exams and then for IB courses where it mapped on to more than 1 AP exam, they also took the additional AP exam as an extra (e.g., macro and micro economics). So they ended up with plenty of credits. Robinson also offers some AP courses which they took.

Historically IB is an international education program to have consistent standards across countries --often in private international schools. In the US, there has been some push to use IB to boost academics in low income schools, but mainly it's just a rigorous college prep program -- Robinson was never a low-performing school for instance and it is IB.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.

Sorry for the naive question, but do you mean that even with your kids taking AP equivalent exams they received less college credit? Just wanting to better understand the trade offs aside from personal pref and subjective assessments of rigor/difficulty. My very limited understanding is that, historically, IB was created to draw quality students to schools that were not doing that well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here- we are not military. Moving with two older elementary school age kids and plan to stay in the area through highschool. Not really concerned about which elementary school so focused on middle and up.

Not sure if there are any sort of cultural differences between these areas to be aware of besides the military family presence. Anyone have an estimate of roughly what percent of kids are military families in these schools? Just curious.

One cultural difference is that the Woodson pyramid attracts families that want to send their kids to the highly selective TJ HS for Science and Technology within FCPS. When their kids don't get accepted into the TJ program from Frost MS they end up going to Woodson. That's a whole other story, but the summary is that it has a large population of very academically competitive parents. This is why you have heard it is intense there.

One way it can affect your child is through preventing them from standing out for competitive college admissions unless they are able to match the strength of courses the other kids are taking. WSHS and LBSS are solid schools but the average SAT scores are consistently lesser there throughout the years by about 50-100 points versus Woodson. Again, this has practically nothing to do with FCPS schools and teacher quality and frankly entirely due to parental investment in pushing and prepping.

Not OP but isn't there an advantage to go with the AP model over IB? Unless your kid is more arts/humanities focused?

Also, how can you say the difference is solely in parental investment in pushing/prepping? Parents choose schools for a reason, and so do teachers. This just sounds like Woodson-hating (which honestly, as someone who cares about academic rigor, makes me think Woodson might be the best of these options).

I think this is more personal preference--we explicitly chose IB over AP because I think it's a stronger program--particularly in lab sciences and writing/research. Others believe AP is stronger or want a more a la carte approach. The one downside is that IB tends to generate less college credit because they are 2 year courses per exam and the exams are considered a bit tougher. But many kids (including mine) take equivalent AP exams for their IB courses.