FCPS statement on NMF issue

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of people are repeating this talking point of a third party corporation is expecting the school staff to do their work for them. This happens all the time. Those flyers that are sent out by schools, included a lot more work by staff to include the corporations' material into the flyers. Sometimes thru PTA, others directly by school staff. And this is not some random corporate money making opportunity, but one of the most well known academic awards in the country, albeit not the Commended status.

But how hard would it be for that company to just email the kids the info? This is the thing.

They do it for the real winners; the semi-finalists get notifications from the College Board. Maybe they view commended as being worthless. All it signifies is that a kid did well on the PSAT. Does anyone really care? Do colleges that ignore SATs and ACTs really care about a years old PSAT score?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again the tiger moms on racism patrol have been proven wrong. As a FFX taxpayer, I resent this waste of money on a non issue.

+1000 This was such a non-issue. Anyone who is upset by how much FCPS has had to spend on legal fees should go after the money machine known as College Board. It’s beyond ridiculous that they can capture all the contact information on students to sell to colleges (in addition to the testing fee!), but they can’t mail or email a commendation notice??? College Board should be paying FCPS’s legal fees.

We need a special “fight the latest Republican legal nonsense” fund.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again the tiger moms on racism patrol have been proven wrong. As a FFX taxpayer, I resent this waste of money on a non issue.

+1000 This was such a non-issue. Anyone who is upset by how much FCPS has had to spend on legal fees should go after the money machine known as College Board. It’s beyond ridiculous that they can capture all the contact information on students to sell to colleges (in addition to the testing fee!), but they can’t mail or email a commendation notice??? College Board should be paying FCPS’s legal fees.

We need a special “fight the latest Republican legal nonsense” fund.

We need democrats to retake the state house and to deduct the expense from Miyares' budget

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I generally thought the statement was reasonable, it is very frustrating to see that West Potomac claimed not to know about the timing issue. I personally talked with the college counselor about this a few years ago, when they failed to notify families timely. Ultimately, the College Board should be making the notifications.

The kid knows what their score is. Once the ranges are released, they can easily check themselves.

This has not always been the case--which is why the schools have habitually followed the same policy. However, not everyone knows that it can be "checked." The cutoff scores vary from state to state. In other words, a "commended" student in Virginia may be a semi-finalist in Mississippi.

Nevertheless, how difficult is it for the school to hand out the certificates in a timely manner? Not difficult at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I generally thought the statement was reasonable, it is very frustrating to see that West Potomac claimed not to know about the timing issue. I personally talked with the college counselor about this a few years ago, when they failed to notify families timely. Ultimately, the College Board should be making the notifications.

The kid knows what their score is. Once the ranges are released, they can easily check themselves.

This has not always been the case--which is why the schools have habitually followed the same policy. However, not everyone knows that it can be "checked." The cutoff scores vary from state to state. In other words, a "commended" student in Virginia may be a semi-finalist in Mississippi.

Nevertheless, how difficult is it for the school to hand out the certificates in a timely manner? Not difficult at all.

Why should the school care at all? If anything, they should be charging third parties wanting them to distribute literature

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I generally thought the statement was reasonable, it is very frustrating to see that West Potomac claimed not to know about the timing issue. I personally talked with the college counselor about this a few years ago, when they failed to notify families timely. Ultimately, the College Board should be making the notifications.

The kid knows what their score is. Once the ranges are released, they can easily check themselves.

This has not always been the case--which is why the schools have habitually followed the same policy. However, not everyone knows that it can be "checked." The cutoff scores vary from state to state. In other words, a "commended" student in Virginia may be a semi-finalist in Mississippi.

Nevertheless, how difficult is it for the school to hand out the certificates in a timely manner? Not difficult at all.

Why should the school care at all? If anything, they should be charging third parties wanting them to distribute literature

Maybe, because one would hope that they would care about their students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again the tiger moms on racism patrol have been proven wrong. As a FFX taxpayer, I resent this waste of money on a non issue.

+1000 This was such a non-issue. Anyone who is upset by how much FCPS has had to spend on legal fees should go after the money machine known as College Board. It’s beyond ridiculous that they can capture all the contact information on students to sell to colleges (in addition to the testing fee!), but they can’t mail or email a commendation notice??? College Board should be paying FCPS’s legal fees.

We need a special “fight the latest Republican legal nonsense” fund.

We need democrats to retake the state house and to deduct the expense from Miyares' budget

Not if we keep electing Dems like Chap Peterson who are pretty chummy with folks like Miyares.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While I generally thought the statement was reasonable, it is very frustrating to see that West Potomac claimed not to know about the timing issue. I personally talked with the college counselor about this a few years ago, when they failed to notify families timely. Ultimately, the College Board should be making the notifications.

The kid knows what their score is. Once the ranges are released, they can easily check themselves.

This has not always been the case--which is why the schools have habitually followed the same policy. However, not everyone knows that it can be "checked." The cutoff scores vary from state to state. In other words, a "commended" student in Virginia may be a semi-finalist in Mississippi.

Nevertheless, how difficult is it for the school to hand out the certificates in a timely manner? Not difficult at all.

Why should the school care at all? If anything, they should be charging third parties wanting them to distribute literature

Maybe, because one would hope that they would care about their students?

So do we want or not want to hand out participation trophies? Because the y’all rail against those bit want special commendation for someone who does fairly well on a mostly meaningless standardized test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Again the tiger moms on racism patrol have been proven wrong. As a FFX taxpayer, I resent this waste of money on a non issue.

+1000 This was such a non-issue. Anyone who is upset by how much FCPS has had to spend on legal fees should go after the money machine known as College Board. It’s beyond ridiculous that they can capture all the contact information on students to sell to colleges (in addition to the testing fee!), but they can’t mail or email a commendation notice??? College Board should be paying FCPS’s legal fees.

We need a special “fight the latest Republican legal nonsense” fund.

Think it’s called checks and balance. And FCPS did change their procedures. The press release said - we found that we didn’t do anything deliberately wrong - not that we did everything right.

[Anonymous]

How ironic that the same people bitterly complaining about how the school district is wasting its money are the actual people wasting the school district's money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of people are repeating this talking point of a third party corporation is expecting the school staff to do their work for them. This happens all the time. Those flyers that are sent out by schools, included a lot more work by staff to include the corporations' material into the flyers. Sometimes thru PTA, others directly by school staff. And this is not some random corporate money making opportunity, but one of the most well known academic awards in the country, albeit not the Commended status.

But how hard would it be for that company to just email the kids the info? This is the thing.

They do it for the real winners; the semi-finalists get notifications from the College Board. Maybe they view commended as being worthless. All it signifies is that a kid did well on the PSAT. Does anyone really care? Do colleges that ignore SATs and ACTs really care about a years old PSAT score?

Seriously, when I was in high school at least half the students got the stupid psat thing, but no one paid it any mind because it is meaningless. I'm sure I never even put it on my college applications.

[Anonymous]

I previously worked in college admissions. I’m not speaking to this specific award but I’m certainly counseling my own kids to include any and all awards in their apps. I certainly wouldn’t say to them if they were awarded this one - Ahh F this one - leave it off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How ironic that the same people bitterly complaining about how the school district is wasting its money are the actual people wasting the school district's money.

Or, maybe they could have done a mea culpa and said they would do better before hiring a third party to do a report which they refuse to release.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of people are repeating this talking point of a third party corporation is expecting the school staff to do their work for them. This happens all the time. Those flyers that are sent out by schools, included a lot more work by staff to include the corporations' material into the flyers. Sometimes thru PTA, others directly by school staff. And this is not some random corporate money making opportunity, but one of the most well known academic awards in the country, albeit not the Commended status.

But how hard would it be for that company to just email the kids the info? This is the thing.

They do it for the real winners; the semi-finalists get notifications from the College Board. Maybe they view commended as being worthless. All it signifies is that a kid did well on the PSAT. Does anyone really care? Do colleges that ignore SATs and ACTs really care about a years old PSAT score?

There are about 3X more commended students than semifinalists, but all are in the top 4% of test takers. I think some of the Democrats are going to regret the dismissive way they referred to kids whose academic records are, with few exceptions, far above and beyond the accomplishments of politicians like Stella Pekarsky, Laura Jane Cohen, Karl Frisch, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A lot of people are repeating this talking point of a third party corporation is expecting the school staff to do their work for them. This happens all the time. Those flyers that are sent out by schools, included a lot more work by staff to include the corporations' material into the flyers. Sometimes thru PTA, others directly by school staff. And this is not some random corporate money making opportunity, but one of the most well known academic awards in the country, albeit not the Commended status.

But how hard would it be for that company to just email the kids the info? This is the thing.

They do it for the real winners; the semi-finalists get notifications from the College Board. Maybe they view commended as being worthless. All it signifies is that a kid did well on the PSAT. Does anyone really care? Do colleges that ignore SATs and ACTs really care about a years old PSAT score?

There are about 3X more commended students than semifinalists, but all are in the top 4% of test takers. I think some of the Democrats are going to regret the dismissive way they referred to kids whose academic records are, with few exceptions, far above and beyond the accomplishments of politicians like Stella Pekarsky, Laura Jane Cohen, Karl Frisch, etc.

And, many would be semi-finalists in another state.