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Old 10-14-2012, 06:59 PM
 
Location: among the clustered spires
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As it stands now, it seems Park View is far below the other schools and there's some daylight between Tuscarora and the others, although Tuscarora is closer to the others than to Park View.

In fact, looking at the sub-ratings on Great Schools, I see Tuscarora getting an '8' for non economically disadvantaged students and a '1' for economically disadvantaged students (it serves the Plaza/Fort Evans/Edwards Ferry area, which is a contender for Loudoun's second-largest concentration of poverty. We may well end up seeing a less stark version of TC Williams' "Yale or Jail" thing beginning here.
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Old 10-15-2012, 12:28 AM
 
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Originally Posted by JEB77 View Post
I offered TJ's presence in Fairfax as one such "pull"/explanation. It's certainly not offered up as a complete explanation, but I think there's likely something to it.
While I intuitively agree that there is "something to it," the problem for me is that there is difficulty in quantifying the effect of this pull. Off hand, I can't think of a proxy measurement for it either, for that matter. Do you have a suggestion on what we might use to measure this, even if an indirect proxy measure?
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There could be other explanations with respect to the test score differential. For example, insofar as SAT scores are concerned (where there's about a 60-point difference), it's widely understood that SAT scores correlate with family income and education levels. Although Loudoun has higher median incomes than Fairfax, it's possible that the median incomes of the families of students in Fairfax who sit for these tests are higher than those for similar Loudoun families. In addition, there may be families in Fairfax with similar educational backgrounds to those in Loudoun, but who are in lower-income jobs (i.e., a defense contractor in Ashburn may get paid more than a government economist in Fairfax). Or there may be differences in the instructional programs that play a role. These are all possibilities.
And another corollary, some people in Loudoun with high income may have lower educational levels compared to those with similar income levels in Fairfax, especially the inner suburb areas. As David Brooks noted, exurbs used to be popular with affluent blue collar types (contractors, owners of small businesses like pest extermination, landscaping, etc.) and lower-rung white collar types (realtors, lower level IT contractors, etc.).

However, this is no longer the case with places like Ashburn, which now increasingly attracts higher end white collar workers, meaning also parents as corporate employment centers and medical practices, etc. have relocated. Since as you pointed out elsewhere, SAT scores and such tend to be lagging indicators (an idea with which I agree), I would suspect with a high degree of confidence that Loudoun's scores will rise in the long run and may even close the gap with those of Fairfax. All bets are off if there is sequestration, a sudden second recession and continuing European economic malaise and a turn for the worse in the Far East as well as a dramatic reduction in growth among BRIC countries (which is already the case). In this nightmare scenario, Loudoun would suffer more than the inner suburbs.
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Originally Posted by JEB77 View Post
I am not sure that there is anywhere in Fairfax where there is room for the volume of new construction of spacious, over 3000-SF homes that there has been in places like Ashburn in recent years. But help me out - where are the continguous areas in western Fairfax where there are homes similar to those in adjacent parts of Loudoun going for less money? The most likely scenario I could imagine would a TH in some parts of Herndon or Centreville perhaps going for less than a similar (though likely somewhat newer) TH in Ashburn or South Riding.
Yes. But to a lesser degree, you can now purchase similar homes for roughly the same or little less in Centreville, Chantilly and Herndon (Oak Hill) than in Ashburn -- and I mean homes of similar age. Some of the newer western Fairfax homes do not seem to have as much cache as Ashburn/Broadlands/Brambleton homes due to lack of amenities andw alkable attractions (where is Brooklynborndad???!!! ) and the apparently inferior general layout of roads, developments, shops and so on. In my view, many of the western Fairfax developments are a bit of a hash compared to eastern Loudoun, another casualty in my view of the more left-leaning and pro-urbanization orientation of Fairfax pols who tend to neglect the more exurban, western parts of Fairfax.
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Originally Posted by JEB77 View Post
Yes, and there are a lot more kids whose families are receiving assistance in Fairfax than in Loudoun, too. But it's possible that, since kids in the latter category will be less likely to take college admissions exams, the net effect is to Fairfax's advantage insofar as comparisons of test scores are concerned (although some might note that may pose other challenges to Fairfax).
Yes, this is actually where high Gini coefficient may help -- since not all kids take the SAT and AP tests, the county that has a higher number of very high income folks (as well as non-tasking taking low income folks) may have an edge over a broadly middle class or upper middle class area.
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Originally Posted by globalburgh View Post
In Fairfax, you have a longer history of sorting. Those with means crowd into the neighborhoods that feed into the schools with the best reputations. The result is the spread that we have discussed. Given time, I would expect to see the same pattern develop in Loudoun.
As we have discussed, the trend looks VERY good for Loudoun.
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Furthermore, Loudoun schools aren't going to draw wealthy households out of Fairfax County. The migration from Fairfax to Loudoun concerns other factors.
With this I disagree to some extent. People often move when jobs move. Eastern Loudoun seems to be the beneficiary of that right now. And then some people who seem to long for the older lifestyle they once had seem to move to recreate that too. I know quite a few folks who made the move in the last several years from Great Falls to Purcellville/rural Leesburg for example.
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Originally Posted by stpickrell View Post
On the other hand, we have decades of experience studying this spread's development -- and Loudoun's BoS, HOA boards, etc., won't let their area become the next Sterling Park.
I completely agree. This is where the political aspect of the economic development enters.
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Originally Posted by newnewsmama View Post
Many people migrate to Loudoun after they have children. And their children are still very young, not in high school yet. This can explain why Fairfax has lower median income than Loudoun, but higher test scores. I think Loudoun's average SAT score will keep going up in the years to come, as it has been.

Personally, dozens of my friends with kindergarden aged children have moved to Loudoun. Among these families, graduate degrees of both parents are the norm rather than the exception. When their kids enter high schools, the distribution of SAT scores in Loudoun will certainly be different than today.
This is ABSOLUTELY true in my anecdotal, personal experience. When my wife and I moved to Loudoun years ago, we were the only people with doctorates and graduate degrees and the only Ivy Leaguers in our extended neighborhood. Most of our neighbors were small business owners and lower-rung, but highly compensated white collar workers. By the time we left Loudoun, a majority of our neighbors had graduate degrees AND had jobs in Loudoun County intead of the inner suburbs/DC as had been the case earlier. On top of that, most early neighbors either had no kids or older children. The new neighbors had kids for the first time in Loudoun or moved there with very little ones.

When a friend of mine visited the area, he was shocked that 1) there were SO MANY large homes -- he was used to seeing some large homes in most areas, but the sheer concentration of large homes was a complete shock to him 2) so many of these "mansions" had tricycles, big wheels and other small children type toys outside. In the more traditionally affluent areas, mansions usually belong to somewhat older folks who were at the peak of their careers (older law firm partners, older physicians, established financial industry executives) who had older children or those out to college and lives of their own. It flabbergasted my friend from the Northeast to see so many large homes where the parents were obviously young enough to have very little children. Since the area unjustly does not have a reputation as a high-tech entrepreneurial hub like Northern California with the stereotype of hundreds of 20-something millionaires, my friend asked me half in jest "Is this where all the just-became law firm partners and just-finished-residency doctors live?"
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A small portion of my friends did move back to Fairfax. But the only two school districts they consider are Langley and Mclean. The top schools in Fairfax are still going to be top because of their demographics.
My family moved from Loudoun to Fairfax recently. We chose an area zoned for Oakton HS. That didn't matter to me since I homeschool, but did enter into my re-sale calculation. I must admit, I do regret moving, and my wife and I are considering moving back to Loudoun, mainly because we miss the child-friendliness of many of the Loudoun areas. It's not that our current area in Fairfax is hostile to children (like Seattle for example), it's more that there is a great variety of age groups (in fact, my wife and I are the youngest of the bunch in our development) and relatively lower emphasis on activities for young children. I miss Loudoun where the massive number of McMansions spews forth a veritable horde of little kids who play together on the street like it's the 1950s. I used to call them "our street gangs."
Quote:
Originally Posted by JEB77 View Post
Loudoun's scores went down two points this year, but LCPS did say they've gone up 15 points over the past five years, so it seems the longer-term trend is positive.
Didn't the scores decline a little bit for most areas this year?
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If you really parse what you said in the first paragraph, you're suggesting that younger families in Loudoun are, or will be, more educated and affluent than older ones in Loudoun, since Loudoun obviously has current high school students who take these exams. I thought about that possibility in the exchanges with India Lima Delta. Since high schoolers who take SATs are typically 16 or 17, the image that came to my mind was a bunch a 17-year-old locusts who will burst upon the scene in 20__ and start doing really well on their SATs, but I decided that would come across as snarky, even though I liked the metaphor.
I don't think that's snarky at all. In our discourse, I never got the sense that you were deliberately intent on causing offense or being contrarian just to be hostile. I learned somethings during our conversation and you gave me more than a few pauses for second thoughts and re-considerations of certain factors, for which I thank you heartily. You've argued your case cogently and passionately, but never belligerently and, though I may not agree with you on everything, I respect your view and reason. Now back to to the fight...
Quote:
Originally Posted by globalburgh View Post
You make a good and important observation. Also, newer schools (which Loudoun must build to deal with the influx) are more socio-economically diverse than established schools. Another consideration are the retirees that Loudoun attracts. These are wealthy households without children.

What matters is the median income of all the households that send children to a certain high school. That would be an appropriate comparison, not county-to-county.
And speakin' of new demographics in Loudoun, I'd like to raise another question, cautiously due to the sensitive nature of the topic. We all know SAT scores correlate well with income and parental education levels, but there are also strong correlations to ethnicity (for example, East Asian and South Asian pupils, regardless of income level, tend to perform well). I did notice that, traditionally, inner suburbs attracted such demographics in the past, but I am seeing an explosion of that population in Loudoun as well as western Fairfax. How do y'all think that will affect the scores 5-10 years from now and beyond?
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Old 10-15-2012, 03:37 AM
 
Location: Everywhere and Nowhere
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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta;
When a friend of mine visited the area, he was shocked that 1) there were SO MANY large homes -- he was used to seeing some large homes in most areas, but the sheer concentration of large homes was a complete shock to him 2) so many of these "mansions" had tricycles, big wheels and other small children type toys outside. In the more traditionally affluent areas, mansions usually belong to somewhat older folks who were at the peak of their careers (older law firm partners, older physicians, established financial industry executives) who had older children or those out to college and lives of their own. It flabbergasted my friend from the Northeast to see so many large homes where the parents were obviously young enough to have very little children. Since the area unjustly does not have a reputation as a high-tech entrepreneurial hub like Northern California with the stereotype of hundreds of 20-something millionaires, my friend asked me half in jest "Is this where all the just-became law firm partners and just-finished-residency doctors live?"?
Perhaps you can explain to your friend that the developments out there are just modern day versions of 1950s Levittowns but with larger homes due to lower construction costs from use of South of the border immigrant labor and synthetic building materials.
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Old 10-15-2012, 07:10 AM
 
Location: Leesburg
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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
And speakin' of new demographics in Loudoun, I'd like to raise another question, cautiously due to the sensitive nature of the topic. We all know SAT scores correlate well with income and parental education levels, but there are also strong correlations to ethnicity (for example, East Asian and South Asian pupils, regardless of income level, tend to perform well). I did notice that, traditionally, inner suburbs attracted such demographics in the past, but I am seeing an explosion of that population in Loudoun as well as western Fairfax. How do y'all think that will affect the scores 5-10 years from now and beyond?
To the extent that these students are first or second generation immigrants, they will positively impact test score averages. As a rule, the best and brightest emigrate. That's particularly true if the destination country is far away and doesn't border the source country. The effect all but disappears for third generation immigrants.
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Old 10-15-2012, 09:00 AM
 
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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
While I intuitively agree that there is "something to it," the problem for me is that there is difficulty in quantifying the effect of this pull. Off hand, I can't think of a proxy measurement for it either, for that matter. Do you have a suggestion on what we might use to measure this, even if an indirect proxy measure??
So the issue, again, is the extent to which the presence of TJHSST in eastern Fairfax serves as a pull to attract residents to Fairfax County.

As a preliminary observation, I'd note that many of our exchanges reflect a mix of data, hypotheses, anecdote, and personal opinion. If we hold each other to an exacting standard that requires proof beyond a doubt in every instance, we'll have to hold ourselves to that standard as well, and then we'll have precious little to talk about.

In terms of an indirect proxy, the best thing I can think of immediately is that the AAP/GT programs in certain parts of western Fairfax - Carson and Rocky Run MS, in particular - are very large and do not seem to be getting any smaller. These are in communities that, on aesthetic and lifestyle grounds, you have suggested may be less appealing than some parts of eastern Loudoun. If they are, and yet so many GT students (and, yes, this is a heavily Asian demographic) are living in western Fairfax, that might suggest that some subset of those who face a choice between Fairfax and Loudoun are opting for Fairfax because of the GT/AAP opportunities there (and, Carson and Rocky Run, together with schools like Longfellow in McLean and Kilmer in Vienna, are among the top feeders to TJ).

Quote:
Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
However, this is no longer the case with places like Ashburn, which now increasingly attracts higher end white collar workers, meaning also parents as corporate employment centers and medical practices, etc. have relocated. Since as you pointed out elsewhere, SAT scores and such tend to be lagging indicators (an idea with which I agree), I would suspect with a high degree of confidence that Loudoun's scores will rise in the long run and may even close the gap with those of Fairfax. All bets are off if there is sequestration, a sudden second recession and continuing European economic malaise and a turn for the worse in the Far East as well as a dramatic reduction in growth among BRIC countries (which is already the case). In this nightmare scenario, Loudoun would suffer more than the inner suburbs.
I think SAT scores and such are pretty good indicators of the current income levels of the parents of the students sitting for those tests, and they may even tell you a little bit about what's taking place within classrooms. What the current scores may not tell you too much about are the longer-term trends, particularly in a place like Loudoun, where there has been so much population growth in recent years.

I've looked at the Fairfax test data over a 20-year period. Apart from the fact that TJ is always at the top, the main things you can see from the 20-year data (1) there are four high schools that, while they may fall out of the top five from time to time, are almost always immediately behind TJ (Langley, McLean, Woodson and Madison); (3) that, as the number of jobs in the Tysons/Dulles area increased, the primary beneficiaries have been Oakton and Marshall, which displaced in the rankings two schools (Lake Braddock and Robinson) located in areas that, at an earlier point, were viewed as having a "lifestyle" advantage over other areas in Fairfax due to their newer (1970s and 1980s-era) homes, but which are not as close to the main private-sector job centers; (4) central Springfield (the area near Springfield Mall, served by Lee HS) has declined, relative to other parts of the county; and (5) apart from West Potomac, which has a critical mass of neighborhoods near the Potomac River that have long been viewed as very desirable, schools in southeastern Fairfax are almost always at the bottom of the Fairfax table. Obviously, at this point, you can't make any similar observations about schools in Loudoun - many of the schools hadn't yet been built 20 years ago, and the boundaries also may have changed substantially, as the population increased.

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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
Yes. But to a lesser degree, you can now purchase similar homes for roughly the same or little less in Centreville, Chantilly and Herndon (Oak Hill) than in Ashburn -- and I mean homes of similar age. Some of the newer western Fairfax homes do not seem to have as much cache as Ashburn/Broadlands/Brambleton homes due to lack of amenities andw alkable attractions (where is Brooklynborndad???!!! ) and the apparently inferior general layout of roads, developments, shops and so on. In my view, many of the western Fairfax developments are a bit of a hash compared to eastern Loudoun, another casualty in my view of the more left-leaning and pro-urbanization orientation of Fairfax pols who tend to neglect the more exurban, western parts of Fairfax.
I would have thought that, at least when used by DC or inside-the-Beltway residents, a word like "cache" would set your teeth on edge. "Nice" and "appealing" will do the job just fine.

I'm not entirely sure what areas you would consider "Western Fairfax," but I have the sense that you're talking about parts of Herndon, Chantilly and Centreville, and not places like Oak Hill, Fairfax Station or Virginia Run. I don't know these areas particularly well, but know that some of them are congested and have a lot of subdivisions and townhouses built in the 80s. If they are more of a "hash" than a newer community in Loudoun, I don't see how one could possibly ascribe that to the "more left-leaning and pro-urbanization orientation of Fairfax pols," when the rapid growth in Fairfax was a result of pro-business policies adopted for what had previously been sparsely settled suburban areas by both Republican and Democratic politicians (Jack Herrity - Holla!). What they may not have anticipated at the time was exactly how much money and wealth would flood into the region, and how quickly some of what was being built might be quickly seen to suffer by comparison to what was very soon to follow.

In any event, development near jurisdictional borders is always interesting to observe. There are parts of southern Canada that look a heck of lot nicer than what you find in nearby northern areas of American states (I won't name names), and that's due to whole bunch of factors that are more important that the "left-leaning" local politics.

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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
My family moved from Loudoun to Fairfax recently. We chose an area zoned for Oakton HS. That didn't matter to me since I homeschool, but did enter into my re-sale calculation. I must admit, I do regret moving, and my wife and I are considering moving back to Loudoun, mainly because we miss the child-friendliness of many of the Loudoun areas. It's not that our current area in Fairfax is hostile to children (like Seattle for example), it's more that there is a great variety of age groups (in fact, my wife and I are the youngest of the bunch in our development) and relatively lower emphasis on activities for young children. I miss Loudoun where the massive number of McMansions spews forth a veritable horde of little kids who play together on the street like it's the 1950s. I used to call them "our street gangs."
What you're describing is Arlington in the 1940s and 1950s, Annandale in the 1960s, Burke in the 1980s, our "old" neighborhood in Vienna in the 1990s, and some places in Loudoun today. The houses may be bigger, but the spirit is the same. At some point, the little kids will grow up (hopefully after doing well on their SATs); some of the original families will age in place; and others will move out and be replaced by new families with young children. But, because young families do not want to be stranded in either urban or suburban locations without a support group of fellow parents, questions about the presence of families in these neighborhoods will invariably be met with the response that "there are a TON of kids here"!

Last edited by JD984; 10-15-2012 at 09:58 AM..
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Old 10-15-2012, 10:07 AM
 
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Keep in mind that there's an exacerbating effect with poorer performing schools where many affluent parents send their kids to private schools, thus taking some high scorers out of the pool. They can better afford to do this because property values are lower because of the poor public school performance. Merely focusing on public school SAT scores may not provide a complete picture of overall student aptitude in a particular geographical area.
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Old 10-15-2012, 02:29 PM
 
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Originally Posted by CAVA1990 View Post
Perhaps you can explain to your friend that the developments out there are just modern day versions of 1950s Levittowns but with larger homes due to lower construction costs from use of South of the border immigrant labor and synthetic building materials.
Isn't Green Briar in Chantilly actually a Levittown?

Anyway, I don't think Ashburn is just Levittown re-writ c. 2005. There are some similarities, but also some significant demographic differences.
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Originally Posted by globalburgh View Post
To the extent that these students are first or second generation immigrants, they will positively impact test score averages. As a rule, the best and brightest emigrate. That's particularly true if the destination country is far away and doesn't border the source country. The effect all but disappears for third generation immigrants.
Unfortunately, the "rule" of "the best and the brightest" emigrating is not necessarily true (sometimes it's "the most desperate" which may or may not correlate to those with the highest portable job skills). Patterns diverge wildly depending on time and source countries. For example, among Asian migrants, while a sizable portion of Korean immigrants are employer-sponsored (as high as 50+ percent in some cohorts), indicating high levels of education and skill sets, a very tiny portion of Vietnamese immigrants are the same (as low as 1% in some cohorts).

At the same time, Latin American immigrants and children of initially similar economic background don't perform as well on test scores as those from East Asia and South Asia. Put another way, poor East and South Asians immigrant children perform better than poor Latin American immigrants.

There are all kinds of explanations why this is so, but the more relevant question -- as sensitive as it is -- is how these patterns affect test score performance, which seem to be as another poster put it, a "pull" of affluent, education-oriented parents.

In the case of Loudoun County, the demographic changes have not been just about income and size of population. The ethnic variety and generational mix have changed considerably as well.
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Originally Posted by JEB77 View Post
So the issue, again, is the extent to which the presence of TJHSST in eastern Fairfax serves as a pull to attract residents to Fairfax County.

As a preliminary observation, I'd note that many of our exchanges reflect a mix of data, hypotheses, anecdote, and personal opinion. If we hold each other to an exacting standard that requires proof beyond a doubt in every instance, we'll have to hold ourselves to that standard as well, and then we'll have precious little to talk about.
Of course. But we also wouldn't have much to talk about if there is no logical, evidentiary and/or methodological challenge to opinions expressed earlier.

I agree with you already that there is likely a "pull" because of TJ. I am simply trying to get some sense of how strong a pull this might be. I am not asking you to design a method to test the hypothesis, but rather a small inkling of how we might even begin to think about how to measure indirectly such an idea.
Quote:
In terms of an indirect proxy, the best thing I can think of immediately is that the AAP/GT programs in certain parts of western Fairfax - Carson and Rocky Run MS, in particular - are very large and do not seem to be getting any smaller.These are in communities that, on aesthetic and lifestyle grounds, you have suggested may be less appealing than some parts of eastern Loudoun. If they are, and yet so many GT students (and, yes, this is a heavily Asian demographic) are living in western Fairfax, that might suggest that some subset of those who face a choice between Fairfax and Loudoun are opting for Fairfax because of the GT/AAP opportunities there (and, Carson and Rocky Run, together with schools like Longfellow in McLean and Kilmer in Vienna, are among the top feeders to TJ).
But of course this brings up another follow-up. Are such opportunities comparatively limited in eastern Fairfax? What are the numbers like for both regions? Are they both growing? Or is one area growing more than (or even at the expense of) the other?
Quote:
I would have thought that, at least when used by DC or inside-the-Beltway residents, a word like "cache" would set your teeth on edge. "Nice" and "appealing" will do the job just fine.
Only, I would completely agree that some of the inner suburban and DC neighborhoods have far more cache than much of Loudoun. That's the larger public perception anyway. I don't think that cache is always deserved, but that is the reality of public perception.
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I'm not entirely sure what areas you would consider "Western Fairfax," but I have the sense that you're talking about parts of Herndon, Chantilly and Centreville, and not places like Oak Hill, Fairfax Station or Virginia Run. I don't know these areas particularly well, but know that some of them are congested and have a lot of subdivisions and townhouses built in the 80s.
They also have surprisingly large amount of new-ish homes, comparable to the age of homes in Loudoun.
Quote:
If they are more of a "hash" than a newer community in Loudoun, I don't see how one could possibly ascribe that to the "more left-leaning and pro-urbanization orientation of Fairfax pols," when the rapid growth in Fairfax was a result of pro-business policies adopted for what had previously been sparsely settled suburban areas by both Republican and Democratic politicians (Jack Herrity - Holla!). What they may not have anticipated at the time was exactly how much money and wealth would flood into the region, and how quickly some of what was being built might be quickly seen to suffer by comparison to what was very soon to follow.
While western Fairfax was represented in the past by "pro-growth" politicians (Republicans and Democrats), my earlier point had to do with the overall political orientation of Fairfax as a whole in comparison to that in Loudoun. In the case of the latter, of course eastern Loudoun pols are far more pro-growth than those in the western portion. But the political balance is more delicate there, resulting in (perhaps unintentionally) more give-and-take between the two regions. I do not think that is the case in Fairfax, which has always been dominated by the inside-the-Beltway core and its agenda. I think that has hurt the way western Fairfax has developed in the last ten years. Again, it's not that lefty pols are always "anti-growth," it's more that the kind of growth they seek are not always good for a balanced development of what is in reality a very diverse area.
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In any event, development near jurisdictional borders is always interesting to observe. There are parts of southern Canada that look a heck of lot nicer than what you find in nearby northern areas of American states (I won't name names), and that's due to whole bunch of factors that are more important that the "left-leaning" local politics.
No one -- including I -- suggested ideological orientation trumps all. I am on record as stating that political monopoly, whether of leftist or rightist orientation -- hurts good, balanced development and increases likelihood of corruption and incompetence.

I simply stated that ideological balance and "back-and-forth" tend to be a comparative, marginal advantage for economic growth and that in my assessment Loudoun seems to have that advantage over Fairfax. I think that you, much like another poster who shall remain nameless () are beginning to respond to my use of the term "leftist" like a dog whistle (). Politics do matter, sometimes quite profoundly, on how an area develops.

And sometimes larger historical forces and events can overwhelm many other factors. Vancouver, BC, for example, is today exceptionally affluent. Bu no one knew decades ago (when it was a relative backwater in Canada) that the economic rise of East Asia would improve Vancouver's economic prospects or, more singularly, the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule would send untold millions in investment (and population) to the area from there.
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What you're describing is Arlington in the 1940s and 1950s, Annandale in the 1960s, Burke in the 1980s, our "old" neighborhood in Vienna in the 1990s, and some places in Loudoun today. The houses may be bigger, but the spirit is the same.
Yes, somethings are very similar, hence my remark about people wanting to recreate "old" lifestyles to some extent. But others are very different. Today's exurban-outer suburban areas are ethnically very different than the inner suburbs of the old.
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Originally Posted by CAVA1990 View Post
Keep in mind that there's an exacerbating effect with poorer performing schools where many affluent parents send their kids to private schools, thus taking some high scorers out of the pool. They can better afford to do this because property values are lower because of the poor public school performance. Merely focusing on public school SAT scores may not provide a complete picture of overall student aptitude in a particular geographical area.
I think the private school attendance rate in NoVA is lower than VA as a whole and certainly lower than many other affluent areas outside this region. Likely that has a lot to do with how good our public schools are and how little disparity there is among public schools compare to other affluent areas where the Gini coefficient is higher.
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Old 10-15-2012, 03:18 PM
 
Location: Leesburg
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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
Unfortunately, the "rule" of "the best and the brightest" emigrating is not necessarily true (sometimes it's "the most desperate" which may or may not correlate to those with the highest portable job skills). Patterns diverge wildly depending on time and source countries. For example, among Asian migrants, while a sizable portion of Korean immigrants are employer-sponsored (as high as 50+ percent in some cohorts), indicating high levels of education and skill sets, a very tiny portion of Vietnamese immigrants are the same (as low as 1% in some cohorts).

At the same time, Latin American immigrants and children of initially similar economic background don't perform as well on test scores as those from East Asia and South Asia. Put another way, poor East and South Asians immigrant children perform better than poor Latin American immigrants.

There are all kinds of explanations why this is so, but the more relevant question -- as sensitive as it is -- is how these patterns affect test score performance, which seem to be as another poster put it, a "pull" of affluent, education-oriented parents.

In the case of Loudoun County, the demographic changes have not been just about income and size of population. The ethnic variety and generational mix have changed considerably as well.
Of course the rule is not necessarily true. But the general pattern holds. The exceptions do not disprove the rule. In fact, you hit on a natural experiment that makes my point:

Put another way, poor East and South Asians immigrant children perform better than poor Latin American immigrants.

Coming from East and South Asia, the barriers to immigration are much higher. You can see that in the cost for human smuggling. China-to-NYC is, by far, the most expensive route.

The ties between culture and educational performance are tenuous. Immigrants, regardless of ethnicity, are much more likely to be entrepreneurs than native born. On average, I would expect an immigrant South Asian to strongly outperform a domestic born South Asian.
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Old 10-15-2012, 03:56 PM
 
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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post

I agree with you already that there is likely a "pull" because of TJ. I am simply trying to get some sense of how strong a pull this might be. I am not asking you to design a method to test the hypothesis, but rather a small inkling of how we might even begin to think about how to measure indirectly such an idea.

But of course this brings up another follow-up. Are such opportunities comparatively limited in eastern Fairfax? What are the numbers like for both regions? Are they both growing? Or is one area growing more than (or even at the expense of) the other?
I think that's hard to say. The GT/AAP programs in Fairfax, which are viewed as feeders to TJ, have been growing at a faster rate than the total middle school population in recent years. The three largest GT/AAP programs in Fairfax today are at Carson, Rocky Run and Longfellow. The first two are in Western Fairfax; the third is in eastern Fairfax. Over the past five years, the greatest growth in both absolute and percentage terms has been at Rocky Run, followed by Longfellow and then Carson.

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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
While western Fairfax was represented in the past by "pro-growth" politicians (Republicans and Democrats), my earlier point had to do with the overall political orientation of Fairfax as a whole in comparison to that in Loudoun. In the case of the latter, of course eastern Loudoun pols are far more pro-growth than those in the western portion. But the political balance is more delicate there, resulting in (perhaps unintentionally) more give-and-take between the two regions. I do not think that is the case in Fairfax, which has always been dominated by the inside-the-Beltway core and its agenda. I think that has hurt the way western Fairfax has developed in the last ten years. Again, it's not that lefty pols are always "anti-growth," it's more that the kind of growth they seek are not always good for a balanced development of what is in reality a very diverse area.
The most powerful local politician in Fairfax in the 1970s and 1980s was arguably Jack Herrity, a pro-growth Republican who originally represented the Springfield District. Here's a map of the Fairfax supervisory districts; the Springfield District is outside-the-Beltway.

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/maps/im...rDistricts.pdf

The only reason I belabor this is that it seems as if you're suggesting that Western Fairfax, as it currently exists, is a legacy of decisions made by liberal or leftist politicians who favor inside-the-Beltway interests, whereas many of those decisions were, in fact, made by Herrity and his colleagues. I think Western Fairfax, in its current incarnation, is more a result of the fact that decisions were made at a particular point in time about how Western Fairfax should grow, and you seem to think it has more to do with the political sympathies and primary allegiances of the decision-makers. Perhaps I've misunderstood your commentary.

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Originally Posted by IndiaLimaDelta View Post
I think the private school attendance rate in NoVA is lower than VA as a whole and certainly lower than many other affluent areas outside this region. Likely that has a lot to do with how good our public schools are and how little disparity there is among public schools compare to other affluent areas where the Gini coefficient is higher.
I agree to some extent, but perhaps it's also a legacy of not having many older areas (the City of Alexandria is an exception, and does have a fair number of private schools); not having as much money as DC or Maryland for most of the region's history; and the fact that Maryland originally attracted far more Catholics (who were more likely to establish private and parochial schools).
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Old 10-15-2012, 06:02 PM
 
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Originally Posted by globalburgh View Post
Of course the rule is not necessarily true. But the general pattern holds. The exceptions do not disprove the rule.
Except it's not a rule. More below.
Quote:
In fact, you hit on a natural experiment that makes my point:

Put another way, poor East and South Asians immigrant children perform better than poor Latin American immigrants.

Coming from East and South Asia, the barriers to immigration are much higher. You can see that in the cost for human smuggling. China-to-NYC is, by far, the most expensive route.
Except, within Asia, barrier to immigration to US is higher for the Vietnamese than for the South Koreans, but the latter outperform the former in just about every measure of economic and educational performance. There is far greater repression and poverty in Vietnam than in South Korea, so I would surmise that there is much greater desperation to escape the society in the former than there is in the latter.

Similarly, many Latin immigrants, especially those from Central America, undergo unimaginable horrors to come to this country. For a very visceral cinematic treatment of that, see an outstanding film called Sin Nombre which was made by an American director of Japanese-Swedish ancestry who actually rode atop a Tren de las Muerte (or "train of death") for days at a time as research.


Sin Nombre - Official Trailer - YouTube

Again, barriers and levels of desperation to immigrate do not correlate to economic and educational outcome.
Quote:
The ties between culture and educational performance are tenuous.
That is patently untrue. There are persistent gaps in educational performance among various ethnic group and sub-groups. There is considerable evidence that both genetic factors and culture (nature and nurture) play a strong role.
Quote:
Immigrants, regardless of ethnicity, are much more likely to be entrepreneurs than native born. On average, I would expect an immigrant South Asian to strongly outperform a domestic born South Asian.
You are mixing up two different factors. Immigrants do tend to be more "entrepreneurial," but that has to do with self-selecting tendency for risk-taking. Risk-taking does not correlate to educational performance. Both Salvadoran and Korean immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than Salvadorans and Koreans as whole, but there is considerable educational gap between the two immigrant groups.

Immigrant South Asians may or may not outperform native-born Americans of South Asian heritage. I have not seen the data to say one way or another. South Asians are somewhat unique in that many already come to the US as first generation immigrants with good English skills (which is why they are consistently the best performing in economic and educational terms among Asian immigrants although the fact that usually the best educated upper classes in high poverty-stricken societies furnish immigrant cohorts also play a role). That does not apply, however, to East Asians whose first generation immigrants do not come with strong English skill sets and are often not from the upper classes of their own societies, which are in the first place quite affluent by global standards and do not tend to create a lot of urgency for out-migration as might be the case elsewhere.

As I stated before, immigrants' economic and educational performance vary wildly by both circumstances and national origin of immigrants. There are very few, if any, fast and hard rules.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JEB77 View Post
The most powerful local politician in Fairfax in the 1970s and 1980s was arguably Jack Herrity, a pro-growth Republican who originally represented the Springfield District. Here's a map of the Fairfax supervisory districts; the Springfield District is outside-the-Beltway.

http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/maps/im...rDistricts.pdf

The only reason I belabor this is that it seems as if you're suggesting that Western Fairfax, as it currently exists, is a legacy of decisions made by liberal or leftist politicians who favor inside-the-Beltway interests, whereas many of those decisions were, in fact, made by Herrity and his colleagues. I think Western Fairfax, in its current incarnation, is more a result of the fact that decisions were made at a particular point in time about how Western Fairfax should grow, and you seem to think it has more to do with the political sympathies and primary allegiances of the decision-makers. Perhaps I've misunderstood your commentary.
I understand about Fairfax politics of the long-gone past. (30-40 years ago is when dinosaurs roamed the earth in a dynamic area such as ours. )

I am referring to the economic and real estate development created in the 1990s and 2000s, not the "legacy" areas from the earlier era. Newer exurban-suburban developments in western Fairfax are much more haphazard and poorly integrated with other infrastructure than compared to those in eastern Loudoun, and I think the political orientation of the Fairfax pols in the recent years did play a role in neglecting these areas. To the extent that population and businesses in this area grew, they were happy to take the revenues, but I don't think they were as considerate when it was time to spend money and time.

Now, much of this may not have mattered if people who sought a certain type of lifestyle had nowhere to go and had to settle for western Fairfax. When eastern Loudoun rose and became viable as a competitor, however, it became a bit of a game changer. Enough people began to skip western Loudoun and hop over to eastern Loudoun with all the consequences that entails.
Quote:
I agree to some extent, but perhaps it's also a legacy of not having many older areas (the City of Alexandria is an exception, and does have a fair number of private schools); not having as much money as DC or Maryland for most of the region's history; and the fact that Maryland originally attracted far more Catholics (who were more likely to establish private and parochial schools).
Yes I agree that there are many factors that contributed to our lower private school attendance rate.

Still, if our public schools were of low quality, don't you think that market demand would have created more than a few over the years, given that even before the era of mass affluence in the region, there was a pretty health slice of upper crust folks in the area?

Last edited by IndiaLimaDelta; 10-15-2012 at 06:45 PM..
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