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Anonymous wrote:I would pick Wakefield. You didn’t ask about other schools but I would avoid olde creek and little run.

Thanks. What is it about Wakefield?

Not sure that there is anything special about Wakefield, but Old Creek’s principal isn’t competent.

Isn’t competent is a nice way to put it.

We have kids who will go to Olde Creek in the near future. Can you share more?

Mantua and WFES have townhouses and some apartments zoned to them while CWES only has single family homes zoned to it.

CWES and Mantua have the later start time but WFES starts earlier in the day and lets out earlier.

CWES houses the FCPS deaf and hard of hearing program so kids are bussed in from all over the county for the DHH program in addition to kids also being bussed in for the AAP center.

Mantua had the oil spill many years ago so be aware of the houses that were in that area.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would pick Wakefield. You didn’t ask about other schools but I would avoid olde creek and little run.

Thanks. What is it about Wakefield?

Not sure that there is anything special about Wakefield, but Old Creek’s principal isn’t competent.

Isn’t competent is a nice way to put it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would pick Wakefield. You didn’t ask about other schools but I would avoid olde creek and little run.

Thanks. What is it about Wakefield?

Not sure that there is anything special about Wakefield, but Old Creek’s principal isn’t competent.

Anonymous wrote:Where is this “lower income housing” in Mantua? We have been house hunting and haven’t seen anything under $1 million

It's right off Little River Turnpike.

Only on DCUM is a 400K-700K house qualified as poor.

Anonymous wrote:Where is this “lower income housing” in Mantua? We have been house hunting and haven’t seen anything under $1 million

Well, relatively affordable I should say.

There are townhouses (Persimmon Cr) that go for between 400k-500k, like this one: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3730-Persimmon-Cir_Fairfax_VA_22031_M51783-24327

The Chesterfield Mews townhouses (600-700k) are a bit nicer: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/3185-Colchester-Brook-Ln_Fairfax_VA_22031_M57600-04052?from=srp-list-card

There are some houses in Mantua that are under a mil but you will not see them anytime soon because ongoing fed rate hikes and corresponding relatively high mortgage rates are keeping sellers at bay. Many refinanced to a low rate and will not sell under these conditions. This is also causing the prices to stay elevated because of scarcity. The preponderance of more expensive houses on the market could reflect that these sellers are not mortgage dependent. (I'm house hunting too and have been studying this market.)

Where is this “lower income housing” in Mantua? We have been house hunting and haven’t seen anything under $1 million

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Anonymous wrote:Woodson has slid in the rankings, prioritize great school ratings of 8 or higher for elementaries to avoid low ses

But GS rankings don't just focus on academic performance. Not sure what to make of Woodson slide, but we can't afford in the Madison, McLean, and Langley pyramids. We could try Oakton but not sure which elm and middleschool... Advice appreciated.

PP is a troll. There’s literally nothing wrong with Woodson. It’s a great school.

Their rating of 6/10 for 2022 says otherwise. I remember Woodson used to be an 8/10 a few years ago. Something is going downhill there but I suppose that can be said for a lot of FCPS.

I recently told my friend that Woodson was well regarded and to ignore the 6 because if you looked they are being dinged for stupid equity reasons. I don't support great schools and I also sent US news and niche rankings to her and suggested a more wholistic approach.

Great Schools is an abysmal ranking system--not worth looking at--it has no benchmarked system of measurement, its equity measure is hare-brained. USNews is better. Even better to just look at the data on the Woodson FCPS profile. Woodson always has strong SATs, pass rates on standardized measures and college admissions.

US News is also a bit of a black box though. They use diversity in their scoring but not totally clear how. For example, despite good test scores, they rank WFES surprisingly low (155) relative to Mantua (95) and CWES (57). Schooldigger is a bit different, with rankings of 40, 85, 97, respectively.

Rankings aside, I'm curious to hear more about WFES and the PTA, activities, enrichment offerings, etc.

Sure. I meant to imply that even US News is better than GS (not that that's saying much). I'd rather go to the data of interest than to a score anyway--and FCPS provides quite a bit on their school profiles.

But isn't the available data essentially % proficiency at or above grade level (and broken down by race/ethnicity, income, etc)? Or is there a way to find out how proficient kids are, on average, at a given school? Would be nice to know this for AAP and gen ed.

Yeah, it's frustrating, because FCPS had a really robust data reporting on their school profiles, but 2 years ago the Virginia Department of Ed insisted that the state do all the reporting rather than local districts and the state shares a lot less meaningful data. Now there's just a link to the VA DoE under the testing bar. You used to be able to look at pass advanced rates, separated out by AAP/Gen ed/ELL/SpEd, DRA rates including growth between 1st and 2nd grade which told a lot about the quality of reading instruction in a school (when they did DRA before VA DoE required the new inventories) on the FCPS school profiles--it was an amazing resource.

In lieu of better data, as long as they break up the not-so-informative %-proficient-at-or-above-grade-level data by certain categories (economically challenged, English learners, etc.) one can use that as a window into school quality...with the expectation that better schools should show higher rates of proficiency for all groups in normal times, not just higher rates for those who are likely to have lots of support at home.

Pandemic data are also telling in some ways. I pulled some of this data last year but I can't remember how I got it so I'm not sure if one can still get it now--I think it was directly from VA DoE. It broke the data up by subject and various subgroupings (race, ethnicity, economically challenged, English learner). And I looked particularly at how different groups fared pre and post pandemic (2019 vs 2021). Maybe it's too simplistic, but you could think of the pandemic data as what happens when the school is out of the picture... And if the scores were decent pre-pandemic, and they dropped a lot during, then the school maybe was doing something right before all went south. And there is some indication of that for economically disadvantaged kids at Mantua and a bit less so for WFES (English proficiency relatively low both pre and post pandemic for this group).

Conversely, if scores stay up during the pandemic, it probably says more about the students than the school. For example, asian students at Mantua and CWES did just fine during the pandemic. At WFES there was a 20-pt drop in math proficiency. White kids did better at WFES than Mantua and CWES.

Of course there's only so much one can learn from this kind of data, and maybe the assumption that pandemic scores reflect the child and home and not the school, but I do find it interesting.

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Anonymous wrote:Woodson has slid in the rankings, prioritize great school ratings of 8 or higher for elementaries to avoid low ses

But GS rankings don't just focus on academic performance. Not sure what to make of Woodson slide, but we can't afford in the Madison, McLean, and Langley pyramids. We could try Oakton but not sure which elm and middleschool... Advice appreciated.

PP is a troll. There’s literally nothing wrong with Woodson. It’s a great school.

Their rating of 6/10 for 2022 says otherwise. I remember Woodson used to be an 8/10 a few years ago. Something is going downhill there but I suppose that can be said for a lot of FCPS.

I recently told my friend that Woodson was well regarded and to ignore the 6 because if you looked they are being dinged for stupid equity reasons. I don't support great schools and I also sent US news and niche rankings to her and suggested a more wholistic approach.

Great Schools is an abysmal ranking system--not worth looking at--it has no benchmarked system of measurement, its equity measure is hare-brained. USNews is better. Even better to just look at the data on the Woodson FCPS profile. Woodson always has strong SATs, pass rates on standardized measures and college admissions.

US News is also a bit of a black box though. They use diversity in their scoring but not totally clear how. For example, despite good test scores, they rank WFES surprisingly low (155) relative to Mantua (95) and CWES (57). Schooldigger is a bit different, with rankings of 40, 85, 97, respectively.

Rankings aside, I'm curious to hear more about WFES and the PTA, activities, enrichment offerings, etc.

Sure. I meant to imply that even US News is better than GS (not that that's saying much). I'd rather go to the data of interest than to a score anyway--and FCPS provides quite a bit on their school profiles.

But isn't the available data essentially % proficiency at or above grade level (and broken down by race/ethnicity, income, etc)? Or is there a way to find out how proficient kids are, on average, at a given school? Would be nice to know this for AAP and gen ed.

Yeah, it's frustrating, because FCPS had a really robust data reporting on their school profiles, but 2 years ago the Virginia Department of Ed insisted that the state do all the reporting rather than local districts and the state shares a lot less meaningful data. Now there's just a link to the VA DoE under the testing bar. You used to be able to look at pass advanced rates, separated out by AAP/Gen ed/ELL/SpEd, DRA rates including growth between 1st and 2nd grade which told a lot about the quality of reading instruction in a school (when they did DRA before VA DoE required the new inventories) on the FCPS school profiles--it was an amazing resource.

I would imagine a lot of this info is still collected? I wonder if there's any way to access. I will explore what is available at VA DoE . Personally I would love to have a lot more information and I think families/the public deserve to know.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woodson has slid in the rankings, prioritize great school ratings of 8 or higher for elementaries to avoid low ses

But GS rankings don't just focus on academic performance. Not sure what to make of Woodson slide, but we can't afford in the Madison, McLean, and Langley pyramids. We could try Oakton but not sure which elm and middleschool... Advice appreciated.

PP is a troll. There’s literally nothing wrong with Woodson. It’s a great school.

Their rating of 6/10 for 2022 says otherwise. I remember Woodson used to be an 8/10 a few years ago. Something is going downhill there but I suppose that can be said for a lot of FCPS.

I recently told my friend that Woodson was well regarded and to ignore the 6 because if you looked they are being dinged for stupid equity reasons. I don't support great schools and I also sent US news and niche rankings to her and suggested a more wholistic approach.

Great Schools is an abysmal ranking system--not worth looking at--it has no benchmarked system of measurement, its equity measure is hare-brained. USNews is better. Even better to just look at the data on the Woodson FCPS profile. Woodson always has strong SATs, pass rates on standardized measures and college admissions.

US News is also a bit of a black box though. They use diversity in their scoring but not totally clear how. For example, despite good test scores, they rank WFES surprisingly low (155) relative to Mantua (95) and CWES (57). Schooldigger is a bit different, with rankings of 40, 85, 97, respectively.

Rankings aside, I'm curious to hear more about WFES and the PTA, activities, enrichment offerings, etc.

Sure. I meant to imply that even US News is better than GS (not that that's saying much). I'd rather go to the data of interest than to a score anyway--and FCPS provides quite a bit on their school profiles.

But isn't the available data essentially % proficiency at or above grade level (and broken down by race/ethnicity, income, etc)? Or is there a way to find out how proficient kids are, on average, at a given school? Would be nice to know this for AAP and gen ed.

Yeah, it's frustrating, because FCPS had a really robust data reporting on their school profiles, but 2 years ago the Virginia Department of Ed insisted that the state do all the reporting rather than local districts and the state shares a lot less meaningful data. Now there's just a link to the VA DoE under the testing bar. You used to be able to look at pass advanced rates, separated out by AAP/Gen ed/ELL/SpEd, DRA rates including growth between 1st and 2nd grade which told a lot about the quality of reading instruction in a school (when they did DRA before VA DoE required the new inventories) on the FCPS school profiles--it was an amazing resource.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woodson has slid in the rankings, prioritize great school ratings of 8 or higher for elementaries to avoid low ses

But GS rankings don't just focus on academic performance. Not sure what to make of Woodson slide, but we can't afford in the Madison, McLean, and Langley pyramids. We could try Oakton but not sure which elm and middleschool... Advice appreciated.

PP is a troll. There’s literally nothing wrong with Woodson. It’s a great school.

Their rating of 6/10 for 2022 says otherwise. I remember Woodson used to be an 8/10 a few years ago. Something is going downhill there but I suppose that can be said for a lot of FCPS.

I recently told my friend that Woodson was well regarded and to ignore the 6 because if you looked they are being dinged for stupid equity reasons. I don't support great schools and I also sent US news and niche rankings to her and suggested a more wholistic approach.

Great Schools is an abysmal ranking system--not worth looking at--it has no benchmarked system of measurement, its equity measure is hare-brained. USNews is better. Even better to just look at the data on the Woodson FCPS profile. Woodson always has strong SATs, pass rates on standardized measures and college admissions.

US News is also a bit of a black box though. They use diversity in their scoring but not totally clear how. For example, despite good test scores, they rank WFES surprisingly low (155) relative to Mantua (95) and CWES (57). Schooldigger is a bit different, with rankings of 40, 85, 97, respectively.

Rankings aside, I'm curious to hear more about WFES and the PTA, activities, enrichment offerings, etc.

Sure. I meant to imply that even US News is better than GS (not that that's saying much). I'd rather go to the data of interest than to a score anyway--and FCPS provides quite a bit on their school profiles.

But isn't the available data essentially % proficiency at or above grade level (and broken down by race/ethnicity, income, etc)? Or is there a way to find out how proficient kids are, on average, at a given school? Would be nice to know this for AAP and gen ed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woodson has slid in the rankings, prioritize great school ratings of 8 or higher for elementaries to avoid low ses

But GS rankings don't just focus on academic performance. Not sure what to make of Woodson slide, but we can't afford in the Madison, McLean, and Langley pyramids. We could try Oakton but not sure which elm and middleschool... Advice appreciated.

PP is a troll. There’s literally nothing wrong with Woodson. It’s a great school.

Their rating of 6/10 for 2022 says otherwise. I remember Woodson used to be an 8/10 a few years ago. Something is going downhill there but I suppose that can be said for a lot of FCPS.

I recently told my friend that Woodson was well regarded and to ignore the 6 because if you looked they are being dinged for stupid equity reasons. I don't support great schools and I also sent US news and niche rankings to her and suggested a more wholistic approach.

Great Schools is an abysmal ranking system--not worth looking at--it has no benchmarked system of measurement, its equity measure is hare-brained. USNews is better. Even better to just look at the data on the Woodson FCPS profile. Woodson always has strong SATs, pass rates on standardized measures and college admissions.

US News is also a bit of a black box though. They use diversity in their scoring but not totally clear how. For example, despite good test scores, they rank WFES surprisingly low (155) relative to Mantua (95) and CWES (57). Schooldigger is a bit different, with rankings of 40, 85, 97, respectively.

Rankings aside, I'm curious to hear more about WFES and the PTA, activities, enrichment offerings, etc.

Sure. I meant to imply that even US News is better than GS (not that that's saying much). I'd rather go to the data of interest than to a score anyway--and FCPS provides quite a bit on their school profiles.

Anonymous wrote:CWES is more dominated by AAP than either Mantua or WFES. Forty percent of CWES students are in level IV vs. only 20% at Mantua and 14% at Wakefield.

WFES is whiter (about 60%) and has less socioeconomic diversity (around 8% FARMS).

Mantua and CWES are both are around 46% white and 13% FARMS. In both cases, this is probably due to students bussed in for AAP from nearby Title I elementaries.

Mantua has the most English language learners (10%) followed by CWES (8%) and WFES (6%).

There is a lower-income housing development in Mantua. Not everyone there is wealthy. CW zone may also have some, not sure.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woodson has slid in the rankings, prioritize great school ratings of 8 or higher for elementaries to avoid low ses

But GS rankings don't just focus on academic performance. Not sure what to make of Woodson slide, but we can't afford in the Madison, McLean, and Langley pyramids. We could try Oakton but not sure which elm and middleschool... Advice appreciated.

PP is a troll. There’s literally nothing wrong with Woodson. It’s a great school.

Their rating of 6/10 for 2022 says otherwise. I remember Woodson used to be an 8/10 a few years ago. Something is going downhill there but I suppose that can be said for a lot of FCPS.

I recently told my friend that Woodson was well regarded and to ignore the 6 because if you looked they are being dinged for stupid equity reasons. I don't support great schools and I also sent US news and niche rankings to her and suggested a more wholistic approach.

Great Schools is an abysmal ranking system--not worth looking at--it has no benchmarked system of measurement, its equity measure is hare-brained. USNews is better. Even better to just look at the data on the Woodson FCPS profile. Woodson always has strong SATs, pass rates on standardized measures and college admissions.

US News is also a bit of a black box though. They use diversity in their scoring but not totally clear how. For example, despite good test scores, they rank WFES surprisingly low (155) relative to Mantua (95) and CWES (57). Schooldigger is a bit different, with rankings of 40, 85, 97, respectively.

Rankings aside, I'm curious to hear more about WFES and the PTA, activities, enrichment offerings, etc.