What, you mean the astronaut schools aren't the best?

With all that wacky lawsuit business behind them, FairfaxCAPS has gone back to its other pet divide-and-conquer project: ranking all 136 Fairfax County elementary schools based on their performance on Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) tests.

Using that yardstick, schools in Reston ran the gamut, from among the best in the county to near the bottom of the barrel. Contradicting years of mindlessly repeated advice from real estate agents, though, the two "astronaut schools" -- North Reston's Armstrong Elementary and Aldrin Elementary -- were not the top two schools on the list. Test score-obsessed parents might want to consider moving to South Reston, as two of the three top-ranked elementary schools in Reston are located south of the Toll Road, but they're probably already asking to transfer their kids to Haycock, Colvin Run, or Great Falls Elementary (ranked 1st-3rd) because of their AP Kindergarten classes and lack of stubby scissors and whatnot.

Here's how Reston-area schools stacked up:

• Sunrise Valley Elementary ranked 16th
  
• Aldrin Elementary ranked 22nd
  
• Hunters Woods Elementary ranked 39th
  
• Forest Edge Elementary ranked 58th
  
• Armstrong Elementary ranked 84th
  
• Terraset Elementary ranked 104th
  
• Lake Anne Elementary ranked 107th
  
• Dogwood Elementary ranked 131st

Education experts will tell you that test scores tell you far more about the socioeconomic backgrounds of a school's students than the quality of the educational program or its teachers. Fortunately, we all know that socioeconomic differences were never what worried FairfaxCAPS and its backers, right?

Right.