Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

Not sure what "big yards" is supposed to do for them. And kids in the burbs don't "run around freely", at least none of my relatives' or in-laws' kids do. Hell, my nephew has to be driven to school by his mother. They leave early and sit in a line of cars waiting for the school staff to shepherd them into the building. If they don't arrive extra early, then they're at the end of the line, and have to wait longer. So they make sure they get to the school 40 minutes early and sit there idling. In line. It sounds like Hell on Earth.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Yes. While the DCUM crowd loves to sing praises to DC's ethnic diversity, the actual truth is that Washington is way less diverse, ethnically speaking, than Maryland and especially than Virginia. Both states are ahead of DC in the percentage of foreign-born, and speakers of languages other than English. The best ethnic restaurants, Saturday heritage programs, foreign-language preschools. temples and mosques, are all in the burbs.

And excellent point about why immigrants move here. Middle-class immigrants, and even working-class ones don't care about the PC lines. They very unapologetically go to where the best schools are. They don't care about walkability and rubbing shoulders with anyone.

As with most things, the answer is "it depends." My kid's DCPS classmates speak French, Amharic, and German at home--and that's just what I know of. No shortage of diversity here. I'm sure the same is true of some of the close-in burbs.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:These results include a sample of all students in DC - DCPS, charter and private.

Nope. From the "state comparisons" page:

State Comparisons provides tables and maps that compare states and jurisdictions based on the average scale scores for selected groups of public school students within a single assessment year, or compare the change in performance between two assessment years.

Private schools also don't require common core testing used as the primary data point to evaluate public schools. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but private schools utilize NAEP testing but are not required to publish scores. Private students do not take an equivalent to the common core tests which have become common for public schools. Public/private data comparisons are not 1:1.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Yes. While the DCUM crowd loves to sing praises to DC's ethnic diversity, the actual truth is that Washington is way less diverse, ethnically speaking, than Maryland and especially than Virginia. Both states are ahead of DC in the percentage of foreign-born, and speakers of languages other than English. The best ethnic restaurants, Saturday heritage programs, foreign-language preschools. temples and mosques, are all in the burbs.

And excellent point about why immigrants move here. Middle-class immigrants, and even working-class ones don't care about the PC lines. They very unapologetically go to where the best schools are. They don't care about walkability and rubbing shoulders with anyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

I live in Dc and my kids go to DCUM HRCS and i love it & make fun of my sister who lives in columbia MD. I babysat her kids for a week and was blown away by how ethnically diverse it was- kids from senegal to Kuala Lampur all playing together. DC is very WASP w/ a smattering of Catholics, AA and very few of anything else who actually attend public schools. I am not saying that all of the other things you are saying aren't true but don't knock fairfax- a lot of immigrants didn't come here so they can live in cramped condos w/ parquet floors and dirty streets and walk to open air markets. They moved to the US to drive SUVs to giant gleaming malls. I grew up in potomac, MD and our entire school was full of diplomats & people who worked at the world Bank. My cousins who lived close by and my best friends parents all living in bethesda/potomac were WB employees. There are also tons of physicians in that area who are mostly foreigners b/c theres a shortage of US trained doctors living in close in MD/VA suburbs as well.

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow. So why are people always claiming that MoCo and N. Arlington are so much better? Though true those are statewide scores...can we see a county breakdown

White kids in DC are overwhelmingly from wealthy educated families. They will do well anywhere. It's teaching the rest of the kids that shows how strong a school system is. Also standardized tests aren't everything. Those white kids in DC may be passing at a higher rate than their counterparts (in everywhere else in the US where there are middle class and poor white kids) but that doesn't mean they are better off in dcps.

blah blah blah blah.

These are important data to refute the very specific group of law firm-type parents who insist that their progeny need to be educated in Bannockburn, Bradley Hills, Somerset, Pyle, Key Science Focus, Williamsburg MS, etc. This data shows that those children do not, in fact, need to flee the District with their white, highly educated parents because, schools.

(this is a different analysis than, say, "name the middle school in the entire region with the best math department.")

I guess if all you care about is whether your kid can do well on a standardized test then you're correct. And I'm sure there are some schools in DC that hold up well to schools in the burbs. But if you really think that your kid is going to get the same level of education at, for example, Brent as your kid would get in Somerset or Falls Church City, you're crazy. Teachers can do so much more with a class made up entirely of wealthy suburban kids than they can with a class made up of some wealthy kids and some really poor kids.

OK, so schools in wealthy suburbs are better than ours. But there are few really poor kids at neighborhood schools like Maury and Brent these days, and the PTAs pay for classroom aides to help them. I you think that your kid is getting a better all around education in Somerset or Falls Church city, you're crazy. Where are the Smithsonian museums and botanical gardens in the suburban hinterland? We walk down to the National Mall in 15 minutes. Where are the local libraries? We walk two minutes to reach ours. Where are the local theatres you can get to in a matter off minutes? We're off to Folger on our bikes. Where are the free military band concerts, the chances to greet lawmakers in local restaurants, the chance to rub shoulders with tourists from all over the world, the outdoor movies, the cultural festivals around the corner in those blah municipalities? Well-educated parents can do much more in rich urban environments and so kids come out ahead.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have a friend who bailed on the Hill a couple years ago over schools issues. Her child has moved onto an AAP center in Fairfax, while ours, who is the same age, is at Brent. I'm not convinced that her child learns more than mine a given week. She's far from the Smithsonians now, while we walk down most weekends. Our child takes seriously good music and art classes a 5-minute walk from our house, and visit the the local library across the street almost every day. She has to drive her kid everywhere, or put him on a school bus. My kids' classmates have parents who are World Bank economists, design Mars rovers for NASA, serve as senior diplomats and military officers, and drive legislative battles in the Senate.

I'm not buying that Fairfax offers young families more overall, at least at the elementary school level.

Is the topic the actual stuff that is taught in school, or the opportunities to learn outside of school?

NP here, people with the diverse careers listed in that post live in Fairfax as well, have you even met anyone from there? The schools there are also very likely more diverse in both racial and SES terms than your school.

Please stop making the claim that everyone on the hill is more interesting than everywhere else. It makes you sound like an uninformed snob. The issues or driving vs. walking are valid, but nothing else in your post makes very much sense.

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)

Anonymous wrote:Meh, I like the Hill because there are a ton of kids and it is very close to my job, not much more than that. The cultural opportunities are very exaggerated. Kids would benefit just as much from big yards and the ability to run around freely as they would from a trip to the Smithsonian museums once a week. (And what kid wants to go to a museum that often anyway?)