Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My partner and I are narrowing down to the McLean pyramid and Marshall pyramid. This would include middle schools like Longfellow, Kilmer, Thoreau, and elementary schools like Freedom Hill, Shrevewood, Stenwood, etc. Anyone has kids going to these schools? What are your thoughts on them, and the neighborhoods where people live to attend those schools? Pro's and con's?

I have children in Freedom Hill and quite like it. The teachers and administrators have been supper supportive and solved problems in a constructive way. I have a kid in local level IV there and another that will almost certainly be joining him there soon. I opted not to send to Westbriar center level IV because I liked the school so much. Only problem is that there are some "poor kids" who cause some problems. I assume at a "better" school there would still be "rich entitled kids" causing problems. At least whenever a problem has popped up (a kid hitting my kid, for example), the administrators have jumped right on it and fixed it immediately. I love living in the Tysons area - walk to the mall, all doctors, stores, car service, etc. is within an approximately 5 minute drive and some is straight up walkable.

OP here - thanks for this. We were almost sure about the Marshall pyramid until I learned about IB and AP - Marshall only does IB and no AP - did you find this to be an issue? I need to read up more on the differences of those programs, pro's and con's of having IB or AP?

I think the areas in McLean and West Falls Church that feed into Chesterbrook, Franklin Sherman, Haycock, and Kent Gardens, and then Longfellow/McLean, are all pretty sweet. All the schools (ES/MS/HS) are fairly close to one another, and you’re also close to Metro, Tysons, and DC. If you do look at the Marshall area, you should know that only a small percentage of Thoreau kids (@15%) go to Marshall. The rest go to Madison or Oakton. The situation is reversed at Kilmer; most go to Marshall and maybe 15-20% go to Madison.

Anonymous wrote:My partner and I are narrowing down to the McLean pyramid and Marshall pyramid. This would include middle schools like Longfellow, Kilmer, Thoreau, and elementary schools like Freedom Hill, Shrevewood, Stenwood, etc. Anyone has kids going to these schools? What are your thoughts on them, and the neighborhoods where people live to attend those schools? Pro's and con's?

I have children in Freedom Hill and quite like it. The teachers and administrators have been supper supportive and solved problems in a constructive way. I have a kid in local level IV there and another that will almost certainly be joining him there soon. I opted not to send to Westbriar center level IV because I liked the school so much. Only problem is that there are some "poor kids" who cause some problems. I assume at a "better" school there would still be "rich entitled kids" causing problems. At least whenever a problem has popped up (a kid hitting my kid, for example), the administrators have jumped right on it and fixed it immediately. I love living in the Tysons area - walk to the mall, all doctors, stores, car service, etc. is within an approximately 5 minute drive and some is straight up walkable.

My partner and I are narrowing down to the McLean pyramid and Marshall pyramid. This would include middle schools like Longfellow, Kilmer, Thoreau, and elementary schools like Freedom Hill, Shrevewood, Stenwood, etc. Anyone has kids going to these schools? What are your thoughts on them, and the neighborhoods where people live to attend those schools? Pro's and con's?

I'd say 10-15 years ago MCPS was more desirable than Fairfax but they have swapped places now.

MCPS is still dealing with the disaster of their home grown curriculum 2.0. It doesn't look like they solved any of the internal problems that were responsible for this mess so its questionable whether the roll out of replacement curriculums will be enough. MCPS has made other questionable academic decisions over the past decade involving extreme grade inflation, getting rid of final exams because kids with passing grades were failing them, and not creating a safe environment for students. There seems to be a big labeling problem with honors classes being the normal classes and on grade level classes being the remedial ones. The GT programs are scattered throughout the county and being politicized. It appears that MCPS is trying to defund and move away from many of these programs.

Fairfax is more sensible. There is AAP and TJ. So far admission has still been merit based unlike MCPS which is now demographic based.

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Anonymous wrote:Fairfax is still VA. Definitely go with Moco. I never understand these posters who think they live in some “diverse” place in VA.

You need to leave your basement, house, or whatever bubble you reside in and open your eyes.

Ah, the person who is so proud to live in NoVa. News flash - you’re in Virginia.

Lol. I’m in NoVa.

On the other hand, you are clearly still in Mommy and Daddy’s basement. Hopefully, you at least have a window that lets in some sunshine???

Last time I checked, NoVa was not a state. But for someone who left whatever tiny midwestern town to move to the suburbs of DC in Virginia it’s a big deal. You’ll always be from flyover country anyway.

. Have you never driven around MD??? There is so much hillbilly in that state too. MOCO and Annapolis are the outliers. The rest of the state is pretty small or rural!

DP, but previous poster is right about you. You're definitely clueless about this area and MD.
Have you heard of PG, Howard or Baltimore City or Baltimore county?

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is a joke. They haven’t yet updated their school profiles since 2017-18; they won’t release test information that might reveal the weaknesses of a large number of MCPS schools; and the main focus of their web page is on an equity framework that is highly convoluted and but does manage to reveal that many students are doing very poorly on math assessments.

Actually, they call out the low performances of URM, in that equity area of the website -- "focus group".

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/data/equity-accountability-model.html

The dashboard website also has a lot of other data that shows the "weaknesses" of a large of schools. Doesn't appear to me that they are trying to hide anything. Quite the opposite -- they've put a spotlight on the under performing group.

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax is still VA. Definitely go with Moco. I never understand these posters who think they live in some “diverse” place in VA.

You need to leave your basement, house, or whatever bubble you reside in and open your eyes.

Ah, the person who is so proud to live in NoVa. News flash - you’re in Virginia.

Lol. I’m in NoVa.

On the other hand, you are clearly still in Mommy and Daddy’s basement. Hopefully, you at least have a window that lets in some sunshine???

Last time I checked, NoVa was not a state. But for someone who left whatever tiny midwestern town to move to the suburbs of DC in Virginia it’s a big deal. You’ll always be from flyover country anyway.

. Have you never driven around MD??? There is so much hillbilly in that state too. MOCO and Annapolis are the outliers. The rest of the state is pretty small or rural!

? I would not call Baltimore and its suburbs rural, in any way shape or form, neither is PG. Every state has "hillbilly" areas, even CA, where I'm originally from.

MCPS is a joke. They haven’t yet updated their school profiles since 2017-18; they won’t release test information that might reveal the weaknesses of a large number of MCPS schools; and the main focus of their web page is on an equity framework that is highly convoluted and but does manage to reveal that many students are doing very poorly on math assessments.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax is still VA. Definitely go with Moco. I never understand these posters who think they live in some “diverse” place in VA.

You need to leave your basement, house, or whatever bubble you reside in and open your eyes.

Ah, the person who is so proud to live in NoVa. News flash - you’re in Virginia.

Lol. I’m in NoVa.

On the other hand, you are clearly still in Mommy and Daddy’s basement. Hopefully, you at least have a window that lets in some sunshine???

Last time I checked, NoVa was not a state. But for someone who left whatever tiny midwestern town to move to the suburbs of DC in Virginia it’s a big deal. You’ll always be from flyover country anyway.

. Have you never driven around MD??? There is so much hillbilly in that state too. MOCO and Annapolis are the outliers. The rest of the state is pretty small or rural!

Commute is King. DCUM likes to pretend that there is some massive difference culturally but honestly this area feels the same from one expensive neighborhood to the next.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fairfax is still VA. Definitely go with Moco. I never understand these posters who think they live in some “diverse” place in VA.

You need to leave your basement, house, or whatever bubble you reside in and open your eyes.

Ah, the person who is so proud to live in NoVa. News flash - you’re in Virginia.

Lol. I’m in NoVa.

On the other hand, you are clearly still in Mommy and Daddy’s basement. Hopefully, you at least have a window that lets in some sunshine???

Last time I checked, NoVa was not a state. But for someone who left whatever tiny midwestern town to move to the suburbs of DC in Virginia it’s a big deal. You’ll always be from flyover country anyway.

on sports - i think lake braddock and wshl won the last two state championships in baseball or something and lake braddock is pretty good at basketball. not sure about swim clubs - don't really follow the 9 year old swimming circuit that carefully.

hahhah. i was just giving my experience. but you win the poster award. congrats. government workers are lazy and wherever you live is definitely much better than where anyone else lives.

Anonymous wrote:that's probably true. though i've found most of the military people around are on their last assignment and plan to stay or just retired and are working for a private company. in general burke / wshs has a LOT of government workers with stay at home or parttime working moms. that arrangement makes for very stable families, lots of well-organized kid activities and well-behaved kids in schools. and that's been true in my experience.

All very true but also moms who are teachers/counselors/etc, 100% or large % teleworkers, Feds, and lots of other kinds of WOHM and all sorts of different kinds of families. Just didn't want OP to get the wrong impression that this is some kind of alternate universe throw-back to Mayberry.

We're a good example of all of the above - military family who retired here, DH is now a Fed, I work from home full-time.