Anonymous wrote:It’s just crazy to pay Fairfax County prices, and to live in Fairfax County at all when you could live closer in, and have to send your kids to private school. I get doing that in DC but at least in most places where you’re paying a premium for a suburban location, part of the deal is high achieving schools.

For those concerned of diversity, there are diverse Fairfax County middle schools and high schools that are high achieving.

Hi Arlington poster. Hope you are enjoying your easy commute to your job in DC (where nobody is actually working) and your distance learning in Arlington public school.

I've been out here in 22309 on my 1 acre lot and 5500 square foot house that cost me less than you paid for your .25 acres and 3000 sq foot house. My kids are attending Catholic school everyday, and my boat is ready to get back out on the River when the weather warms up again. You might want to try it before you knock it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s just crazy to pay Fairfax County prices, and to live in Fairfax County at all when you could live closer in, and have to send your kids to private school. I get doing that in DC but at least in most places where you’re paying a premium for a suburban location, part of the deal is high achieving schools.

For those concerned of diversity, there are diverse Fairfax County middle schools and high schools that are high achieving.

You are not paying a premium when buying in that area. You are getting a discount versus almost all other areas of FFC County.

this. People live there because you can still be relatively close in (depending on where you work) and get a SFH with a decent yard in a kid friendly neighborhood for under 700k, under 600k before the recent run up.

Anonymous wrote:It’s just crazy to pay Fairfax County prices, and to live in Fairfax County at all when you could live closer in, and have to send your kids to private school. I get doing that in DC but at least in most places where you’re paying a premium for a suburban location, part of the deal is high achieving schools.

For those concerned of diversity, there are diverse Fairfax County middle schools and high schools that are high achieving.

You are not paying a premium when buying in that area. You are getting a discount versus almost all other areas of FFC County.

Anonymous wrote:It’s just crazy to pay Fairfax County prices, and to live in Fairfax County at all when you could live closer in, and have to send your kids to private school. I get doing that in DC but at least in most places where you’re paying a premium for a suburban location, part of the deal is high achieving schools.

For those concerned of diversity, there are diverse Fairfax County middle schools and high schools that are high achieving.

You can look at it differently. We knew we were going to send our kids to Catholic schools no matter where we lived. So buying in 22308/22309 made perfect sense for us (lower prices, bigger house and yard, easy Old Town and river access). Many of our neighbors moved out here for the same reason.

It’s just crazy to pay Fairfax County prices, and to live in Fairfax County at all when you could live closer in, and have to send your kids to private school. I get doing that in DC but at least in most places where you’re paying a premium for a suburban location, part of the deal is high achieving schools.

For those concerned of diversity, there are diverse Fairfax County middle schools and high schools that are high achieving.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My goodness, why are the schools ranked so awful on GS in this area?!

Schools in Moco with little diversity and high FARMS numbers have much better GS rankings then West Potomac...
Why is it ranked so poor?

It’s largely because of the AAP program, which pulls the highest performing kids out of their neighborhood schools and sends them to a center school starting in third grade, which is the year that kids take the Virginia SOL which are used to compute the Great Schools ratings...

I’m sure most schools would not fare well if you excluded the highest 20% of academic performers from their official evaluations.

Sorry, the above should apply to elementary schools in this area. Not sure how this affects middle and high school.

the AAP center is at Stratford Landing which recently jumped to 6 out of 10. West Potomac (along with MVHS) pulls from the RT1 corridor which is the poorest area in Fairfax. Langley and McLean don't have literal trailer parks within their bounds

Poe in Annandale is the only Title 1 middle school in the county. FX and FCPS fund the Lee and Mount Vernon districts as if it was 1985 concentration of poverty and ESL. Since then others Mason, Dranesville [Herndon] have had big changes in demographics. West Potomac addition is just bizarre. Walkers to whitman are bused to Sandburg - not just AAP. So corrupt.

We're one of the families moving away from Ft Hunt area despite the fact that we love it here. For commuting to DC on GW Parkway, yes despite Oldtown traffic, proximity to the Potomac, the trail, and Oldtown, gorgeous trees, and family-friendly neighborhood are all amazing. MS and HS-not so much.
We are committed to keeping our kids in public schools, and the clash of two Socioeconomic classes here creates a much less than ideal environment imho. I hear the calls of racism, but disagree. We'd love our kids to go to a diverse school: W Springfield for example, one of the pyramids we're looking into, has 54% white, and thriving Black and Hispanic student populations: College readiness for those kids are at par with their white classmates. At WestPo, white kids get rated at 10/10, Hispanic kids 1/10, and blacks 5/10. I do not think this kind of "diversity" is the answer to our problem of racism, in an environment where these groups of kids don't even interact much, let alone learn to appreciate each other.
Is leaving the answer? Not necessarily. But that's a different conversation to have.
We're in a similar price bracket, looking into Burke, W. Springfield, Eastern parts of Fairfax.

I think this neighborhood is a great value given the size/quality of homes, lovely old growth trees, and proximity to DC. Schools combine this neighborhood (which is definitely not diverse) with Route 1 (which is very diverse). Lots of people who live here and like their homes etc
can afford to send their kids to private/catholic and do. I can't comment on the AAP thing but did find it interesting that Stratford Landing has more AAP classes than not.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My goodness, why are the schools ranked so awful on GS in this area?!

Schools in Moco with little diversity and high FARMS numbers have much better GS rankings then West Potomac...
Why is it ranked so poor?

It’s largely because of the AAP program, which pulls the highest performing kids out of their neighborhood schools and sends them to a center school starting in third grade, which is the year that kids take the Virginia SOL which are used to compute the Great Schools ratings...

I’m sure most schools would not fare well if you excluded the highest 20% of academic performers from their official evaluations.

So your point/argument is that while the schools aren't great and most of the good kids aren't shipped away to be isolated form the Rt1 kids, even if yours arent they will be fine? There is a reason there is a life boat for 20% of the kids.

Why do you think they ship 20% of the kids away? Why do you think they make the standards for AAP basically = middle class. There rarely life boats on ships that aren't sinking. The 20% life raft for the middle class has nothing to do with enrichment other than the official reason to keep it legal. I am not saying a middle class kid can't come out of all of that. All I am saying is most parents with 2 brain cells to rub together know they can do better elsewhere.

The ship wouldn’t be sinking but for the fact that they are sinking it, and it is primarily socioeconomic/race-based. All the faux liberal upper middle class white families bend over backwards to game the system to get their slightly above average kids in AAP so they can brag about living in a diverse area without their kids actually having to be exposed to a diverse group of people.

Anonymous wrote:Vienna or West Springfield have better schools and SFHs in the $800 range.

Same with Burke

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My goodness, why are the schools ranked so awful on GS in this area?!

Schools in Moco with little diversity and high FARMS numbers have much better GS rankings then West Potomac...
Why is it ranked so poor?

It’s largely because of the AAP program, which pulls the highest performing kids out of their neighborhood schools and sends them to a center school starting in third grade, which is the year that kids take the Virginia SOL which are used to compute the Great Schools ratings...

I’m sure most schools would not fare well if you excluded the highest 20% of academic performers from their official evaluations.

So your point/argument is that while the schools aren't great and most of the good kids aren't shipped away to be isolated form the Rt1 kids, even if yours arent they will be fine? There is a reason there is a life boat for 20% of the kids.

Why do you think they ship 20% of the kids away? Why do you think they make the standards for AAP basically = middle class. There rarely life boats on ships that aren't sinking. The 20% life raft for the middle class has nothing to do with enrichment other than the official reason to keep it legal. I am not saying a middle class kid can't come out of all of that. All I am saying is most parents with 2 brain cells to rub together know they can do better elsewhere.

If you’re not so subtly referring to race, all of the schools in the area are more than 20% white

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My goodness, why are the schools ranked so awful on GS in this area?!

Schools in Moco with little diversity and high FARMS numbers have much better GS rankings then West Potomac...
Why is it ranked so poor?

It’s largely because of the AAP program, which pulls the highest performing kids out of their neighborhood schools and sends them to a center school starting in third grade, which is the year that kids take the Virginia SOL which are used to compute the Great Schools ratings...

I’m sure most schools would not fare well if you excluded the highest 20% of academic performers from their official evaluations.

So your point/argument is that while the schools aren't great and most of the good kids aren't shipped away to be isolated form the Rt1 kids, even if yours arent they will be fine? There is a reason there is a life boat for 20% of the kids.

Why do you think they ship 20% of the kids away? Why do you think they make the standards for AAP basically = middle class. There rarely life boats on ships that aren't sinking. The 20% life raft for the middle class has nothing to do with enrichment other than the official reason to keep it legal. I am not saying a middle class kid can't come out of all of that. All I am saying is most parents with 2 brain cells to rub together know they can do better elsewhere.

Vienna or West Springfield have better schools and SFHs in the $800 range.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My goodness, why are the schools ranked so awful on GS in this area?!

Schools in Moco with little diversity and high FARMS numbers have much better GS rankings then West Potomac...
Why is it ranked so poor?

It’s largely because of the AAP program, which pulls the highest performing kids out of their neighborhood schools and sends them to a center school starting in third grade, which is the year that kids take the Virginia SOL which are used to compute the Great Schools ratings...

I’m sure most schools would not fare well if you excluded the highest 20% of academic performers from their official evaluations.

Sorry, the above should apply to elementary schools in this area. Not sure how this affects middle and high school.

the AAP center is at Stratford Landing which recently jumped to 6 out of 10. West Potomac (along with MVHS) pulls from the RT1 corridor which is the poorest area in Fairfax. Langley and McLean don't have literal trailer parks within their bounds

In addition to AAP issues, based on the two 22308/22309 neighborhoods I've lived in, I'd say about 30-40% of the kids attend private or Catholic schools for some or all of their K-12 education. Those are (mostly) high performing kids who are leaving the public school system. I would bet there is no other area in the DMV that loses such a high number of kids to private schools.

I wonder if you'd win your bet. Many families in Alexandria City and in the Langley pyramid in FCPS send their kids to privates, although perhaps for different reasons.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great if you have enough saved for private middle and high school

Racist much?

Not a racist, just a realist

More like not a realist, just a racist. We see you.

Here we go again. Making everything about race when it has nothing do to with race!

Yes, it does. The same UMC white kids who excel at Waynewood and Stratford continue to excel at Sandburg and West Potomac. So, if you say 'route 1 schools, ew' it's because you have some reason to think that people who live along Rt 1 (for those who are new to the discussion, are generally POC, heavily Latin immigrant population) should not be near your snowflake.

Do your kids go to Sanburg or West Potomac?