Anonymous wrote:Edison actually shows up lower on the challenge index than TC ...that's just bad.

Oh, no, not another "Challenge Index" fanboi. There are few academic measures as meaningless as the Challenge Index, yet TC seems determined to pump as many kids as possible through AP classes to get a "good score" on the Challenge Index. Jay Matthews needs to sit down.

Anonymous wrote:OP -- I think you and your family would do much, much better at a very selective private school. A very selective (and I mean extremely selective, perhaps NCS/St. Albans, followed by boarding school in New England) school will give your children the best chance of getting into Harvard or Yale. Of course, I am assuming that they would graduate at the top of their class (as you are). There is no better education than Andover or Exeter. Edison will doom them to a life of mediocrity.

Are you being sarcastic?

OP -- I think you and your family would do much, much better at a very selective private school. A very selective (and I mean extremely selective, perhaps NCS/St. Albans, followed by boarding school in New England) school will give your children the best chance of getting into Harvard or Yale. Of course, I am assuming that they would graduate at the top of their class (as you are). There is no better education than Andover or Exeter. Edison will doom them to a life of mediocrity.

Anonymous wrote:Edison actually shows up lower on the challenge index than TC ...that's just bad.

Higher graduation rates and SATs, though, than either TC or Wakefield.

Anonymous wrote:Edison actually shows up lower on the challenge index than TC ...that's just bad.

The challenge index is worth only the newsprint it's on, which is to say, not worth very much at all.

Edison actually shows up lower on the challenge index than TC ...that's just bad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You can tell OP's kids are younger. She sounds like every other academic snob I've run into here in FCPS. They get incredibly quiet after 2nd grade.

OP here. For the record, I am not an academic snob. DH and I have friends who are true academic snobs and we are not like them at all. That is why DH is pushing to send our kids to public school and not move or send our kids to private school.

We have friends from college and grad school who are from the area. They went to the supposedly better public and private schools - Langley, Landon, Sidwell, BCC, Wooton and Potomac. I know one guy who went to an "average" school in MD, went to UMD and on to MIT for grad school. He said his high school guidance counselor advised him to go to UMD and he did even though he was valedictorian of his high school.

Is your point that he was "too good" for UMD? I was valedictorian of my local public high school and went to JMU (James Madison University, in VA). I was admitted to "better" schools but even with the FA offers, the tuition and living expenses were too expensive (for me). Many people cannot afford tuition to Ivies even if they are admitted. I loved JMU. Law school was a huge financial mistake (at an Ivy, no less!), but I have no regrets about undergrad.

FWIW, I have a college friend who went to Edison and she is a lovely, well-rounded person who doesn't seem stunted in any way by her time there.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Given those areas, yes, I can believe that. But having grown up in this area, I also know that many of the homeowners there have been there for years, that the locale is mostly made up of lower middle class families non-professional families (Rose Hill) who would not consider moving for schools because they aren't as vested in them in the way a parent or family who is expecting their child to go to college and an ivy league or very well known college is.

You really think going to a 'low ranked' FCPS high school will negatively impact a child's chances of going to college, an ivy league or very well known college? That going to a high ranked one will improve their chances? Feel free to move then. Like the PP, I'd much rather my kids go to school with kids whose family have more sense and a good work ethic. I'm also fine with them participating in AP/IB classes where not all kid will pass the exams. Research has been pretty clear that test scores grades are poor predictors of future academic success. The best predictors are opportunities for academic challenge. Despite all the howling on DCUMs, I've not seen any research indicating kids are negatively impacted by lower achieving classmates in the AP/IB classes.

Again, in that area, there are a lot of families where graduating high school is the end of schooling and they are not concerned with college or if they are, they are thinking NOVA. A PP is correct, a lot of immigrant families and for them graduating high school is a big deal, especially when you come from a country where finishing elementary school may not be the norm. I am knocking these families but I am pointing out there is marked difference in attitude towards education when you see the end game as a high school diploma vs. a master's degree.

Oh BS. I would grant there's a big difference in parental involvement in the school but not attitude towards education. These immigrant families know very well education is their kids' ticket to the American dream. They may not know how they're going to pay for college or how to get there kid into college but that's not the same as they don't value education the same way. And, what's the crack about NOVA? Do you know there's an increasing trend of students going to community college to get the pre-requisites done and then transferring to a bigger name school? They still get the vaunted UVA degree at a significantly less cost. More people are realizing that incurring huge debt to graduate from some of these big name schools isn't paying off. The marketplace just doesn’t value degrees from those ‘top tier’ schools as much as the alumni do.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe these charts will be useful:

http://www.fcps.edu/cco/pr/apib/2011/table10ibdiploma.pdf

http://commweb.fcps.edu/schoolprofile/profile.cfm?profile_id=120 (look for the IB results under the "Test Results" tab)

Overall, the picture that emerges is that IB participation at Edison is increasing, and the students seem to do about as well on the IB tests there as at other FCPS schools with IB programs. However, in comparson with some other county schools, such as Marshall and Robinson, the percentage of Edison students who obtain the full IB diploma is low.

There's a difference between trying and achieving. You don't get points for trying.

That's true, but also largely irrelevant to the information that I posted. The information seems to indicate that the Edison students who took IB courses did well on the IB exams compared to students from other schools. At the same time, it indicates that a smaller percentage of Edison students pursued the full IB diploma than at other schools. They may have still received IB certificates and, for that matter, obtained college credits based on the results of the IB exams they took.

Yes, it appears that although the number of students in the IB program is somewhat low, they are doing well on the IB exams. Thank you for the data. I sincerely appreciate it.

It sounds like if my children do reasonably well, their chances of getting into a good school are decent.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe these charts will be useful:

http://www.fcps.edu/cco/pr/apib/2011/table10ibdiploma.pdf

http://commweb.fcps.edu/schoolprofile/profile.cfm?profile_id=120 (look for the IB results under the "Test Results" tab)

Overall, the picture that emerges is that IB participation at Edison is increasing, and the students seem to do about as well on the IB tests there as at other FCPS schools with IB programs. However, in comparson with some other county schools, such as Marshall and Robinson, the percentage of Edison students who obtain the full IB diploma is low.

There's a difference between trying and achieving. You don't get points for trying.

That's true, but also largely irrelevant to the information that I posted. The information seems to indicate that the Edison students who took IB courses did well on the IB exams compared to students from other schools. At the same time, it indicates that a smaller percentage of Edison students pursued the full IB diploma than at other schools. They may have still received IB certificates and, for that matter, obtained college credits based on the results of the IB exams they took.

Anonymous wrote:

Given those areas, yes, I can believe that. But having grown up in this area, I also know that many of the homeowners there have been there for years, that the locale is mostly made up of lower middle class families non-professional families (Rose Hill) who would not consider moving for schools because they aren't as vested in them in the way a parent or family who is expecting their child to go to college and an ivy league or very well known college is.

You really think going to a 'low ranked' FCPS high school will negatively impact a child's chances of going to college, an ivy league or very well known college? That going to a high ranked one will improve their chances? Feel free to move then. Like the PP, I'd much rather my kids go to school with kids whose family have more sense and a good work ethic. I'm also fine with them participating in AP/IB classes where not all kid will pass the exams. Research has been pretty clear that test scores grades are poor predictors of future academic success. The best predictors are opportunities for academic challenge. Despite all the howling on DCUMs, I've not seen any research indicating kids are negatively impacted by lower achieving classmates in the AP/IB classes.

Again, in that area, there are a lot of families where graduating high school is the end of schooling and they are not concerned with college or if they are, they are thinking NOVA. A PP is correct, a lot of immigrant families and for them graduating high school is a big deal, especially when you come from a country where finishing elementary school may not be the norm. I am knocking these families but I am pointing out there is marked difference in attitude towards education when you see the end game as a high school diploma vs. a master's degree.

Anonymous wrote:You can tell OP's kids are younger. She sounds like every other academic snob I've run into here in FCPS. They get incredibly quiet after 2nd grade.

OP here. For the record, I am not an academic snob. DH and I have friends who are true academic snobs and we are not like them at all. That is why DH is pushing to send our kids to public school and not move or send our kids to private school.

We have friends from college and grad school who are from the area. They went to the supposedly better public and private schools - Langley, Landon, Sidwell, BCC, Wooton and Potomac. I know one guy who went to an "average" school in MD, went to UMD and on to MIT for grad school. He said his high school guidance counselor advised him to go to UMD and he did even though he was valedictorian of his high school.

You can tell OP's kids are younger. She sounds like every other academic snob I've run into here in FCPS. They get incredibly quiet after 2nd grade.

Given those areas, yes, I can believe that. But having grown up in this area, I also know that many of the homeowners there have been there for years, that the locale is mostly made up of lower middle class families non-professional families (Rose Hill) who would not consider moving for schools because they aren't as vested in them in the way a parent or family who is expecting their child to go to college and an ivy league or very well known college is.

You really think going to a 'low ranked' FCPS high school will negatively impact a child's chances of going to college, an ivy league or very well known college? That going to a high ranked one will improve their chances? Feel free to move then. Like the PP, I'd much rather my kids go to school with kids whose family have more sense and a good work ethic. I'm also fine with them participating in AP/IB classes where not all kid will pass the exams. Research has been pretty clear that test scores grades are poor predictors of future academic success. The best predictors are opportunities for academic challenge. Despite all the howling on DCUMs, I've not seen any research indicating kids are negatively impacted by lower achieving classmates in the AP/IB classes.