Loudoun County 2011 SAT (Arlington, Fairfax, Great Falls: condo, crime, townhouses)

[hilsmom]

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

Maybe, maybe not. My point was that a TH is a house, every bit as much as a SFH. (home, in my use of the language, is even broader - I was not homeless growing up, though we lived in an apt).

you are correct, and I get your point.

I know that some choose TH living, for myriad reasons, and I'm not knocking it or any other home. But the "dream" for many families (at least the ones in my peer group, which I feel is pretty firmly middle-class for this area) is the house with the fenced yard. One friend who is currently contemplating this lives in a nice, probably 10 year old TH community in Fairfax. She's debating with her husband staying in our current area and buying a SFH that may need some updating and is probably the same size as her current TH OR moving out to Loudoun for the brand new SFH that is bigger and won't need any upfront updating.

I'm not trying to bog people down in semantics or numbers. Just throwing out there what most families I encounter in my everyday life in close-to-the-median HHI families in these two counties are experiencing and discussing.

[brooklynborndad]

Originally Posted by hilsmom

you are correct, and I get your point.

I know that some choose TH living, for myriad reasons, and I'm not knocking it or any other home. But the "dream" for many families (at least the ones in my peer group, which I feel is pretty firmly middle-class for this area) is the house with the fenced yard. One friend who is currently contemplating this lives in a nice, probably 10 year old TH community in Fairfax. She's debating with her husband staying in our current area and buying a SFH that may need some updating and is probably the same size as her current TH OR moving out to Loudoun for the brand new SFH that is bigger and won't need any upfront updating.

I'm not trying to bog people down in semantics or numbers. Just throwing out there what most families I encounter in my everyday life in close-to-the-median HHI families in these two counties are experiencing and discussing.

I am not knocking SFH living, or people's right to make that choice. I just hope they make it because of its real benefits to them, and don't make it because of social pressure from an assumption that somehow a townhouse is not a real home, or not inhabited by "middle class people" (that is probably true in some areas, but its not in Northern Virginia). Pardon, but thats just an issue I do not want to let pass casually.

I realize this is somewhat off topic. Quite frankly I think ranking schools by SAT scores is questionable on a host of grounds - even IF you like the idea of ranking how well a school is performing by test scores (i have issues with that) the SAT is NOT designed to measure school performance (unlike many other standardized tests) - its designed to measure student aptitude for college, which can be influenced by many factors. Its also known to be highly imperfect even at that. As for demographic factors there could be a range of things - family income, income adjusted by parental age (as you point out I think) parental education (not necessarily linear with income, esp in a region with both private sector folks and civil servants) home language status etc.

[michgc]

Whether SAT measures school performance is not necessarily what I'm interested in. And I know that a lot of factors correlate with test scores. Income is a big one. That is why I am surprised that Loudoun's SAT scores are not higher, overall. As you say, though, income is not linear with education necessarily, and I think that might be the case.

On C-D, they only have statistics for high school diplomas and bachelor's degree or higher (not broken out greater than that). According to C-D, Fairfax County has 90.7% of its residents with high school diplomas and 54.8% of it's residents with bachelor's or higher. Loudoun County has 92.5% with a high school diploma and 47.2% with a bachelor's or higher. So Loudoun has a lower percentage of college-educated folks. I don't know if that's why they have lower SAT scores in their top-performing schools (as compared to Fairfax) or if there are other reasons. I was just curious. I used to work in standardized testing, so this always interests me. (I really have no bone in this discussion as I'm moving away from this area in a month anyway.)

[Caladium]

Putting it all in perspective, the public schools in northern Virginia are all fine. If your child wishes to attend one of the top colleges, he or she can achieve that goal, no matter what Nova high school is attended. Even Park View, which sits at the bottom rung, has a fair share of students who are accepted to Ivy League schools every year.

My children's school sits in the middle when it comes to Nova's SAT scores. Nevertheless, my kids got high scores (even if some classmates didn't) and I've been very happy with the quality of the teaching they received. My son graduated from Rensselaer with honors, and my daughter has done equally well at Stanford. Their friends all seemed to get into top colleges. I'm happy that they went to school with a diverse student body since out in the real world they'll have to deal with wide variety of people.

[hilsmom]

Originally Posted by brooklynborndad

I am not knocking SFH living, or people's right to make that choice. I just hope they make it because of its real benefits to them, and don't make it because of social pressure from an assumption that somehow a townhouse is not a real home, or not inhabited by "middle class people" (that is probably true in some areas, but its not in Northern Virginia). Pardon, but thats just an issue I do not want to let pass casually.

I just know I wanted to have a yard for my kid to run around in. This is what my friends (mostly parents of my child's classmates first in daycare and now her elementary school) talk about, too. Most of us started our families in THs. It is a fairly common progression, from TH living to the house with the yard. It has nothing to do with perceptions of THs or who lives in them. It is mostly about having kids with not enough outdoor space, so based on your post, it is a benefit to these families (including my own).

[michgc]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Putting it all in perspective, the public schools in northern Virginia are all fine. If your child wishes to attend one of the top colleges, he or she can achieve that goal, no matter what Nova high school is attended. Even Park View, which sits at the bottom rung, has a fair share of students who are accepted to Ivy League schools every year.

My children's school sits in the middle when it comes to Nova's SAT scores. Nevertheless, my kids got high scores (even if some classmates didn't) and I've been very happy with the quality of the teaching they received. My son graduated from Rensselaer with honors, and my daughter has done equally well at Stanford. Their friends all seemed to get into top colleges. I'm happy that they went to school with a diverse student body since out in the real world they'll have to deal with wide variety of people.

Of course some students can do well at any school. I don't doubt that there are many highly successful students who come out of Loudoun County schools. That wasn't my question. The question was why Loudoun schools, overall, do not do have better overall SAT scores than they do, being that they have the highest median income, not only in this region, but in the whole country. It was just something I was pondering, not whether individual students can succeed there or whether all public schools in NoVA are good or not.

[globalburgh]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Putting it all in perspective, the public schools in northern Virginia are all fine. If your child wishes to attend one of the top colleges, he or she can achieve that goal, no matter what Nova high school is attended. Even Park View, which sits at the bottom rung, has a fair share of students who are accepted to Ivy League schools every year.

I agree. I moved to Leesburg in July. I've found that there are many great neighborhoods that get overlooked because of school reputation. The scuttlebutt about schools verges on absurd. But I am delighted with how the fear mongering influences the decision of where to settle. I'm amazed at how much undervalued real estate is in play.

[JD984]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Putting it all in perspective, the public schools in northern Virginia are all fine. If your child wishes to attend one of the top colleges, he or she can achieve that goal, no matter what Nova high school is attended. Even Park View, which sits at the bottom rung, has a fair share of students who are accepted to Ivy League schools every year.

My children's school sits in the middle when it comes to Nova's SAT scores. Nevertheless, my kids got high scores (even if some classmates didn't) and I've been very happy with the quality of the teaching they received. My son graduated from Rensselaer with honors, and my daughter has done equally well at Stanford. Their friends all seemed to get into top colleges. I'm happy that they went to school with a diverse student body since out in the real world they'll have to deal with wide variety of people.

That's a very healthy perspective, Caladium. Congratulations to your children.

Ironically, negative posts by some Loudoun residents about the high schools in Herndon and Reston contributed to my original decision a few years ago to start posting this information for people to dissect as they saw fit (as did similar posts by some Fairfax residents about those schools and others in Falls Church).

One other aside on Loudoun - The LCPS web site indicates that the percentage of students in LCPS taking the SAT increased 17% last year. I assume that is a larger increase than the percentage of seniors and reflects some outreach efforts to encourage students to take the test. It would be perverse to slam a school for scores that declined or did not improve when that was due, at least in part, to an effort to encourage more students to attend college.

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by michgc

Of course some students can do well at any school. I don't doubt that there are many highly successful students who come out of Loudoun County schools. That wasn't my question. The question was why Loudoun schools, overalll, do not do have better overall SAT scores than they do, being that they have the highest median income, not only in this region, but in the whole country. It was just something I was pondering, not whether individual students can succeed there or whether all public schools in NoVA are good or not.

Sorry if I was misleading, michgc. Didn't mean to do that--it was probably just a matter of how the posts happened to fall. I wasn't trying to imply that I was answering your question. (It's an interesting question but I don't know the answer. It's not my field of expertise so I would just be taking a wild guess.)

My postt was simply to reassure anyone reading this from afar that they don't have to worry about finding a good public school for their kids. Sometimes we get competitive about tests scores and forget that people who don't know this area don't know that the public schools in Nova are all pretty good. Northern Virginia is not like some metro areas where the "bad" schools are very bad (and so someone trying to choose a neighborhood from afar might harm a child by picking a house near a "bad" school). Here, some of the schools are A's, some are more at the B level, but students who want a high SAT score can achieve that goal attending any school here.

[brooklynborndad]

actually kids get into good colleges from all kinds of "bad" schools as well, including inner city schools, rural schools, etc.

And again, its not clear that attending any particular school will impact SAT score. Its NOT an achievement test, or at least it is not supposed to be.