Parents making "pact not to pursue CES & get more enrichment @ home school...anyone pulled this off?

[Anonymous]

DD (3rd grade) attends a small FOCUS ES that is SES diverse, but for all of the reasons we know, usually sends almost exclusively kids from $100k HHI+ families to the CES, when they make up <25% of our school’s student body. Because of all of these factors, our school's 4th and 5th grade tend to skew even poorer and less-resourced. This has been a little less true this year, thanks to the randomness of the lottery, which I think is good. It also means less of a “brain drain” from our school (ugh, so to speak).

Both my kid's MAP math and reading scores are slightly above the 99th percentile. At her ES, they've put her into a pull-out class for math, 3 days/week, for ~8-10 students out of the ~75 in the grade. She really likes it, and it’s awesome, because she’s otherwise starting to find school “boring” and I’d love for her to have more enrichment. Of course, I’d love that for all students, but I digress.

At least one of the parents of another 99th-percentile-ish kid would far prefer her kid to stay in our school, though that kid definitely needs enrichment as well. I am also close enough with two of the other families that have kids that will almost certainly be in the CES lottery pool, and probably would have been selected even in pre-COVID years. I think they would also lean towards keeping their kids out of the pool IF we had something more to offer them at our home school. Given the lottery standards, there are surely another 10 kids, if not more, that could be in the pool, too, and I know some of them as well. That means... there's a cohort here! So we should have more enrichment?

The question is… what can be negotiated with the principal? If I can get several families to commit to staying at our school (5 families would represent as many as half of the very highest scoring kids), would that provide us any leverage? E.g., we take our kids out of the running for CES, so you’ll keep our high-scoring students, and in return, you provide us with additional enrichment?

Our school already has compacted math, and some sort of enhanced literacy in 4th/5th, but I think it's still Benchmark-based and not what I am reading might be termed "ELC". Is even something like ELC possible to add on? I know this isn't a fully-answerable question, just trying to brainstorm. Principal is generally a flexible, open-minded person and might be willing to make something happen— IF it’s possible and IF there’s something in it for them.

Any thoughts? Anyone do anything like this, or know of someone who has? Thanks so much.

[Anonymous]

Wow, if my kids' school educated my kids so well that they ended up with 99th percentile scores, I'd be grateful not looking for "leverage" to get them to do something different. I don't understand why a kid "needs" enrichment if they are doing that well.

-- parent of two 99th percentile kids (out of 3) who will never understand this mentality.

[Anonymous]

I've never heard of a pact like that, but declining CES to stay at a home school where your child is thriving is perfectly legitimate - we did.

One thing that helped make the decision - CES relates only to ELA. The math curriculum is the exact same as everyone else. There's an advanced 4/5 math and a regular 4 math. Even staying at our home school, our DD is in the 4/5 math. If math is your focus, going CES offers nothing extra.

So, the only additional enrichment at CES comes in the form of ELA. Our home school is great at ELA - my DD is constantly reading and writing. Goes through 4-7 books a week. Saw no reason to move her at all. If I start to feel she needs more enrichment I'll sign her up for a creative writing class or something.

[Anonymous]

I would not be confident in any reassurances from the principal on what might be provided.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DD (3rd grade) attends a small FOCUS ES that is SES diverse, but for all of the reasons we know, usually sends almost exclusively kids from $100k HHI+ families to the CES, when they make up <25% of our school’s student body. Because of all of these factors, our school's 4th and 5th grade tend to skew even poorer and less-resourced. This has been a little less true this year, thanks to the randomness of the lottery, which I think is good. It also means less of a “brain drain” from our school (ugh, so to speak).

Both my kid's MAP math and reading scores are slightly above the 99th percentile. At her ES, they've put her into a pull-out class for math, 3 days/week, for ~8-10 students out of the ~75 in the grade. She really likes it, and it’s awesome, because she’s otherwise starting to find school “boring” and I’d love for her to have more enrichment. Of course, I’d love that for all students, but I digress.

At least one of the parents of another 99th-percentile-ish kid would far prefer her kid to stay in our school, though that kid definitely needs enrichment as well. I am also close enough with two of the other families that have kids that will almost certainly be in the CES lottery pool, and probably would have been selected even in pre-COVID years. I think they would also lean towards keeping their kids out of the pool IF we had something more to offer them at our home school. Given the lottery standards, there are surely another 10 kids, if not more, that could be in the pool, too, and I know some of them as well. That means... there's a cohort here! So we should have more enrichment?

The question is… what can be negotiated with the principal? If I can get several families to commit to staying at our school (5 families would represent as many as half of the very highest scoring kids), would that provide us any leverage? E.g., we take our kids out of the running for CES, so you’ll keep our high-scoring students, and in return, you provide us with additional enrichment?

Our school already has compacted math, and some sort of enhanced literacy in 4th/5th, but I think it's still Benchmark-based and not what I am reading might be termed "ELC". Is even something like ELC possible to add on? I know this isn't a fully-answerable question, just trying to brainstorm. Principal is generally a flexible, open-minded person and might be willing to make something happen— IF it’s possible and IF there’s something in it for them.

Any thoughts? Anyone do anything like this, or know of someone who has? Thanks so much.

As a long time MCPS parent with 4 kids (a couple now in college), this sounds absurd. How well do you know the principal? I would tread very carefully. It is high likely that the principal DGAF about your "99%" kids. You are more likely to end up with her promising to "look into" implementing ELC and then it just doesn't happen. You seem to think you have leverage. You have none.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Wow, if my kids' school educated my kids so well that they ended up with 99th percentile scores, I'd be grateful not looking for "leverage" to get them to do something different. I don't understand why a kid "needs" enrichment if they are doing that well.

-- parent of two 99th percentile kids (out of 3) who will never understand this mentality.

I... would be willing to consider this perspective, but I'm not sure I fully understand. I think the disconnect here is that you seem to see high standardized test scores as prima facie evidence that the kids are being "well-educated."

I would agree that they are not being "poorly-educated!"

But I think it's been pretty well-established that very high test scores in young children tend to be much more correlated to parents' SES and education levels than the children's educations (though of course, most such kids usually attend "good" or at least adequate schools).

I feel like you're painting me as a DCUM striver, and that couldn't be further from the truth. I love our school's teachers, but this is not a well-resourced school by MCPS standards. It's a Great Schools 4 or 5. Now, GS is BS (ha) but this is not a case of a parent whose kid is born among the 99th percentile, clawing to put her in the 99.1st percentile. I don't care! Or else I would be pushing to get her into the CES at all costs!

I said I'd like "enrichment" for every student. I believe literally every student would benefit from more personalized, challenging instruction than worksheets and so on. But that's an uphill battle against the whole American public educational philosophy.

There are two reasons I'd like to push for more at our school, specifically for kids who would be in the CES pool.

VERY VERY secondarily, I'd like my own kid to be less bored. Yes, yes, only boring people get bored. But she's possibly 2E and it could help her to be taught with a different approach that meets her where she is, in terms of abstract thinking. But this is only about 10 or 20% of why I'd like "leverage" via enrichment at our school.

The primary reason I am looking for "leverage" is to secure the ~commitment of other families, who might be more likely to send their kids to CES if they are selected. I don't want our school to keep losing primarily white and Asian American MC/UMC kids to the CES. That tends to reinforce all kinds of problematic stereotypes, and shrinks the ~gifted pool at our school, which means fewer resources for those that are left (that tend to skew Black and Latine-- just as gifted but usually a bit lower-scoring).

It's true that this is a little selfish on my part as well, in the sense that I don't want my kid to lose half of her friends/community, either way. About half of her friends are in this CES-likely cohort, and half are not. Either she will lose friends/nerd peers to the CES, or, if she goes to CES, which I'd strongly prefer she did not, she will lose half of her friends left at her ES, not to mention the community feel, and just... I don't want her to go to an overwhelmingly white/UMC program. She is not white, FWIW.

Anyway.

[Anonymous]

OP, at this age, your kid is getting 99% in some test not because of the school but some enrichment at home.

The enrichment could be as subtle as picking up the extensive vocabulary that college educated parents use, living in a functional family, having a social network where achievements in Arts and Sciences is celebrated, exploring the zoo, museum and parks in the regions, learning an instrument, being cared by grandparents who are educated etc, etc.

Trying to get enrichment @homeschool for kids who did not go to CES will not happen...ever. There is a workaround for it (and I did the same for one of my kids) but it requires a whole lot of your attention, time and money. Just to be fair - even if your kid is in a magnet program, please don't expect that program to meet all their needs. You still need to use all your resources and opportunities to enrich them.

I know a lot of parents (most with children in magnets) who form informal groups and make sure that their kids are doing all kinds of enrichment, acceleration etc. However, those that win big in these kinds of endeavors are usually people who know very well what opportunities to pursue, and who have a core group of like minded parents with them. You can research what opportunities to pursue, but, you cannot create a core group of parents around you who value the education and EC like you do. The most successful groups that I have seen are the parents who belong to the Tiger Parent ethnic groups - Russians, Jews, Asians - and have a cultural roadmap to success to follow and trust.

- parent of magnet kids (current and alum)

[Anonymous]

You can't argue that schools have nothing to do with children's abilities and then also argue that the school needs to change.

You also can't use the fact that your kid has 99th percentile test scores as evidence that they're better and so the school should be eager to keep them, and also that the fact that they have high test scores is irrelevant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DD (3rd grade) attends a small FOCUS ES that is SES diverse, but for all of the reasons we know, usually sends almost exclusively kids from $100k HHI+ families to the CES, when they make up <25% of our school’s student body. Because of all of these factors, our school's 4th and 5th grade tend to skew even poorer and less-resourced. This has been a little less true this year, thanks to the randomness of the lottery, which I think is good. It also means less of a “brain drain” from our school (ugh, so to speak).

Both my kid's MAP math and reading scores are slightly above the 99th percentile. At her ES, they've put her into a pull-out class for math, 3 days/week, for ~8-10 students out of the ~75 in the grade. She really likes it, and it’s awesome, because she’s otherwise starting to find school “boring” and I’d love for her to have more enrichment. Of course, I’d love that for all students, but I digress.

At least one of the parents of another 99th-percentile-ish kid would far prefer her kid to stay in our school, though that kid definitely needs enrichment as well. I am also close enough with two of the other families that have kids that will almost certainly be in the CES lottery pool, and probably would have been selected even in pre-COVID years. I think they would also lean towards keeping their kids out of the pool IF we had something more to offer them at our home school. Given the lottery standards, there are surely another 10 kids, if not more, that could be in the pool, too, and I know some of them as well. That means... there's a cohort here! So we should have more enrichment?

The question is… what can be negotiated with the principal? If I can get several families to commit to staying at our school (5 families would represent as many as half of the very highest scoring kids), would that provide us any leverage? E.g., we take our kids out of the running for CES, so you’ll keep our high-scoring students, and in return, you provide us with additional enrichment?

Our school already has compacted math, and some sort of enhanced literacy in 4th/5th, but I think it's still Benchmark-based and not what I am reading might be termed "ELC". Is even something like ELC possible to add on? I know this isn't a fully-answerable question, just trying to brainstorm. Principal is generally a flexible, open-minded person and might be willing to make something happen— IF it’s possible and IF there’s something in it for them.

Any thoughts? Anyone do anything like this, or know of someone who has? Thanks so much.

As a long time MCPS parent with 4 kids (a couple now in college), this sounds absurd. How well do you know the principal? I would tread very carefully. It is high likely that the principal DGAF about your "99%" kids. You are more likely to end up with her promising to "look into" implementing ELC and then it just doesn't happen. You seem to think you have leverage. You have none.

I know the principal moderately well.

Based on reports from other parents regarding gifted and 2E kids, I'm torn as to whether the principal cares that much about them. OOH, they have bigger fish to fry in some ways, with a very large ESOL and smaller, but significant SN cohort. OTOH, I think it's possible, even likely, this admin has given less attention to "gifted" kids in the past because they have (rightly) assumed they were not going to hang around through 5th grade anyway. If they knew these kids were going to hang around, well, the calculus changes a bit.

I don't think I have any leverage at all. I was asking if having a group of parents would be leverage, so to speak.

I do take your point about being vaguely promised "we'll look into it" and nothing happening. That's not unlikely. Hm.

-OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, at this age, your kid is getting 99% in some test not because of the school but some enrichment at home.

The enrichment could be as subtle as picking up the extensive vocabulary that college educated parents use, living in a functional family, having a social network where achievements in Arts and Sciences is celebrated, exploring the zoo, museum and parks in the regions, learning an instrument, being cared by grandparents who are educated etc, etc.

Trying to get enrichment @homeschool for kids who did not go to CES will not happen...ever. There is a workaround for it (and I did the same for one of my kids) but it requires a whole lot of your attention, time and money. Just to be fair - even if your kid is in a magnet program, please don't expect that program to meet all their needs. You still need to use all your resources and opportunities to enrich them.

I know a lot of parents (most with children in magnets) who form informal groups and make sure that their kids are doing all kinds of enrichment, acceleration etc. However, those that win big in these kinds of endeavors are usually people who know very well what opportunities to pursue, and who have a core group of like minded parents with them. You can research what opportunities to pursue, but, you cannot create a core group of parents around you who value the education and EC like you do. The most successful groups that I have seen are the parents who belong to the Tiger Parent ethnic groups - Russians, Jews, Asians - and have a cultural roadmap to success to follow and trust.

- parent of magnet kids (current and alum)

Did you not think I understood your first sentence? My kid is already getting "enrichment" at home from us, per most of your post. Not via any sort of outside tutoring or anything, we just sort of provide it naturally because we are huge nerds.

I guess I could be clearer about my motivations, so here goes:

I am not interested in securing "enrichment" for my own, personal child at all costs, or almost any cost! I am not going to send her to Kumon, I only have the vaguest idea of what Khan Academy even does, summer camp = running around in the woods, and I sent her to a hippie, play-based preschool. I don't necessarily even care if she goes to college!

Since she has to attend school, I wouldn't mind if it were a little more challenging and interesting to her. But I'm not worried about her "falling behind" or not "living up to her potential" if it's not. Maybe a tiny bit nervous about her tuning school out if it's totally unchallenging, but not really.

One of my friends, whose kid is also in the 99th percentile, said, "Hey, if we can't get anything from [Principal], maybe we can meet after school for our own enrichment group?" And I was a little rude with my knee-jerk reaction, lol (I apologized-- it's fine, we're close, she totally got it and is mostly same-page.). I don't think that kind of thing is worthwhile enough for my kid to replace her reading or running around after school.

Also, PP, I categorically reject your essentialist characterization of "Tiger Parent ethnic groups." But anyhow.

[Anonymous]

You can stay at the school even if other families choose to leave. You're right that you can't single-handedly change "the whole American public educational philosophy," but you *can* opt out of the attitude that makes education, opportunity, and achievement into a commodity. You can do that by just staying put. Investing in the school community (the whole school community, not just the high flyers.) Your child may learn something invaluable from being in that school that she wouldn't get in another school setting.

[Anonymous]

I would drop any talk of reassurances or any kind of quid pro quo. Just ask the principal about how a school gets an ELC and if it’s an option for your school. With the lottery, chances are some chunk of the kids you’re taking about will be staying put.

[Anonymous]

No the principal is not going to engage in a conversation if bribe us to stay so your test scores for 4th and 5th look good

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You can't argue that schools have nothing to do with children's abilities and then also argue that the school needs to change.

You also can't use the fact that your kid has 99th percentile test scores as evidence that they're better and so the school should be eager to keep them, and also that the fact that they have high test scores is irrelevant.

Are you this same PP-- "-- parent of two 99th percentile kids (out of 3) who will never understand this mentality?"

Your logic confounds me.

I never said the schools have nothing to do with children's abilities.

You absolutely can argue that the schools have nothing or very little to do with children's abilities, and that the school should make some changes. Public schools are at least theoretically obligated to serve the cohorts they end up with, just as if (okay, similarly to the scenario in which) they serve a significant cohort of kids with SN, or who have ESOL needs, etc.

I would like the "school to change" not so much because of my child's abilities, but largely to serve the community. This is not a scenario in which a school just loses "gifted" kids, which is problematic enough. It's a scenario in which the school loses half of its white/Asian American kids and about half of its UMC kids-- to a program that is mostly comprised of those kids. I don't find this particularly healthy for the kids who leave or the kids who stay.

I NEVER used "the fact that your kid has 99th percentile test scores as evidence that they're better!" Better?! No. So that the school should be eager to keep them? Well, I think the school should be eager to keep all of its students. We (and similar families) have been involved members of its community for years. But I do see that they might like to keep higher scoring students-- perhaps a bit cynically, but whatever helps them while they have to work within the system-- so that their average scores don't take such a big hit in 4th/5th grade. That drop is artificial, BTW! So I'm not talking about anyone gaming the system, I'm talking about them keeping what they should be able to keep, as some similar schools with local CES-type programs are able to do.

And I never said high test scores are irrelevant, per se. Only that they are most strongly correlated with family SES and education, not the school's rigor or whatever. This is a proven fact.

Why did I just spend 15 minutes of my Saturday morning on this?

I feel like the responses here are really reflecting a failure of imagination.

Just because a lot of people on DCUM are all about giving their kids a leg up by nagging their principals for special treatment for their special snowflakes, paying boatloads of cash for tutors for their kids to score an extra 50 points on their SATs, etc., does not mean that a person who would like a small, under-resourced school to get more resources is doing the same thing or coming from the same perspective!

I don't think I could be clearer, but if we have more resources, then those resources can also serve a cohort that is totally "CES material," but might not normally be considered for CES for reasons of institutional/systemic classism and racism. Or who could be selected from a lottery pool, but might choose not to go to CES because of concerns about transportation, leaving the community, etc.

I should have known better than to post here, I guess?

I appreciate the comments that are actually about the feasibility of this idea, even if they are discouraging. But posts like this one... man, IDK.

-OP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would drop any talk of reassurances or any kind of quid pro quo. Just ask the principal about how a school gets an ELC and if it’s an option for your school. With the lottery, chances are some chunk of the kids you’re taking about will be staying put.

Thank you for this suggestion. Per the next PP, I wouldn't be "bribing" or anything like that. I just wasn't sure how to go about this, but this angle is already a fair one-- at least some of the highest scoring kids would stay at our school anyway, d/t the lottery. So there will be some cohort, regardless, which the principal should be trying to serve. I think just talking to a couple of families and letting them know our intentions not to included our kid in the CES pool might be enough to sway them to stay... I'd just like it if they stayed! For all the reasons I already mentioned.

-OP