MoCoRealEstate

Montgomery County Schools

The Montgomery County Public School System (MCPS) is a big enterprise with a $2+ billion dollar annual budget. Over 11,000 teachers, 130,000+ students and 1,200 buses. Big. All school clusters are shown on the map below.  MCPS also provides a robust collection of specialized magnet programs

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Do You Know All MoCo High School Mascots?

February 5th, 2013 Categories: Schools

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School Cluster Pricing Guide

January 22nd, 2013 Categories: Schools

Can you afford to live in a home with the school assignment of your choice? To answer that question, we’ve analyzed all 2012 sales and created a guide that summarizes the price range and types of homes available for each cluster. See the guide now.

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Look Out Xbox – You Have Competition

January 18th, 2013 Categories: Schools

‘Exel Beyond the Bell’ is a public-private partnership that gives students high-quality after-school activities.  There’s a range of classes offered from dance to robotics.  It’s voluntary and it’s fun.  And it keeps kids off of the Xbox and in school an extra hour and forty-five minutes providing a hot meal and transportation home.

This program is currently offered in a handful of schools.  Hopefully we’ll see this roll-out to a lot more.  MCPS did a great job producing this video that describes the program in detail.

 

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The Best High School in Montgomery County, Maryland

September 16th, 2011 Categories: Schools

What are the best Montgomery County schools? We get this question all of the time.  Of course, the answer’s easy.  The best schools are …. OK, there is no simple answer to this question.  The quality of a child’s education depends on so many complex factors that one can’t simply boil it down to a one-dimensional list of the best and the worse.  I’ll summarize key statistics for all high schools later in this article, but you won’t find a “Best Schools” list here.

But to be frank: most parents in Montgomery County and the Metro D.C. area have high expectations for their child’s education; and we talk a lot about schools.  Parents can develop very strong opinions about the “best” and the “worse”.  If you’re new to the area, you’ll get a lot of advice.  When making a decision on where to buy a home, how do you find the best school for you? Read the rest of this entry »

Posted by Bruce Lemieux | 3 Comments »

SAT Scores for MoCo & Metro D.C.

September 14th, 2011 Categories: Schools

SAT scores for the class of 2011 hit the web today. There’s good news – and there’s bad news.  The good news first.  Montgomery County performed significantly better than the national and Maryland average as shown in this chart.

Now the bad news.  We can be a little competitive with our test scores in Montgomery County, so being 17 points behind Fairfax County (our arch-nemesis) is not to be taken lightly.  I expect this may initiate a mass migration across the Potomac into Virginia.  Of course, when you’re ready to move to Fairfax, give us a call.  In addition to keeping track of school stats, we also sell homes.

But first, wait until I update scores for each high school once they are available.  Your high school just may be doing even better than these averages.  So don’t break out the moving boxes just yet.

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Back to School: The Most Wonderful Time

August 28th, 2011 Categories: Schools

I love my kids.  But I love them more when they are out of the house and in school.  Monday is the first day of school in Montgomery County, and I couldn’t be happier.  Our school system is a huge enterprise.  Here’s some stats from their back to school summary starting the 2011-2012 school year:

• 98,000 Students
• 100,000 bus miles every day (that’s 4 times around the equator — every day)
• 40,000 bus stops
• 1,200 buses
• 2,500 more students added this year
• 105 additional classrooms
• Two new schools opening: Cabin John Middle School and Farmland Elementary School

I’ll be humming “it’s the most wonderful time of the year” for at least a week.

 

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Montgomery County Students Dominate Intel Science Search

January 13th, 2011 Categories: Schools

Our public school system has fifteen semifinalists for the 2011 Intel Science Talent search.  According to MCPS, this is the most semifinalists from any single school district in the U.S. (read the announcement on MCPS’s site).

Here’s a breakdown of the semi-finalists by school:

• Montgomery Blair* – 7
• Poolesville* – 3
• Richard Montgomery* – 2
• Walter Johnson – 2
• Winston Churchill – 1

The first three schools are county magnet programs.  Montgomery Blair and Poolesville have Read the rest of this entry »

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Montgomery County School Demographics

November 2nd, 2010 Categories: Schools

MCPS publishes tons of demographic information for every school in the Mongtomery County public school systems.  I mapped these metrics to a map of Montgomery County to help quickly understand demographics of the school system — and of Montgomery County.  All of the data presented here was taken from the MCPS Master Plan for FY2011.

Click the ‘full screen button’ in the lower right corner of the video for best viewing.  I would love to know what you think of this information.  Make a comment!

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Montgomery County High School SAT Scores

October 22nd, 2009 Categories: Schools

I recently posted SAT scores for Montgomery County.  This data was taken from MCPS’s current ‘Schools at a Glance’ pages, but these reports don’t have the most current SAT scores.  An author at the Parents’ Coalition of Montgomery County was able to locate a current report which is summarized below. Read the rest of this entry »

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Montgomery County Magnet Schools

October 8th, 2009 Categories: Schools

The Montgomery County Public School System maintains a portfolio of magnet programs available to high performing students in the county.  MCPS’s magnet programs stand apart from other school programs in two important ways:

• Magnet programs are specialized, rigorous programs administered within existing schools that draw students throughout Montgomery County.  To participate, a student will leave their assigned home school.  Transportation is provided by MCPS.
• Students must apply and be accepted into a magnet program.  As a result, placement can be very competitive.

Programs are available in the elementary, middle and high schools.  A summary of all programs with links back to MCPS follow. Read the rest of this entry »

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