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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
Serious Answers Only—How to Fix MCPS?
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Anonymous
Private school is your answer, there. Don't expect public funding for a local/town enclave in a state where K-12 education administration is delegated to the county level. |
Anonymous
If you want this you need to go advocate for watering down the IDEA. By all means, speak up, please. |
Anonymous
Basically all research supports smaller schools (once they reach a certain size). That's why. |
Anonymous
MCPS has plenty of money. We spend a large amount of money per pupil. Lack of funds is not the issue. The problem is that MCPS mismanages the money that it has. No thanks. Not looking for more of my hard-earned money going towards such a corrupt school system with such inept leadership. |
Anonymous
There's no need to water down any protections for individuals with disabilities. The problem is with how it's implemented, which has no disincentive for parents to seek IEP for any learning deficit. We're allowing a few parents to game the system and draw resources away from the kids with disabilities that IDEA was meant to protect. |
Anonymous
Obviously she’d never do that with her name attached to her statements. I’m sure she’s the same teacher that’s been posting for at least the last year that kids with special needs should go to segregated classrooms. But it’s troubling that there are teachers in MCPS with such attitudes and such limited understandings of special needs and supports. |
Anonymous
You’re obviously arguing against inclusive classrooms, which is a a fundamental component of IDEA’s requirement to educate kids by bringing in services/supports into the least restrictive environment. |
Anonymous
No, I'm not. I'm specifically suggesting that students on an IEP stay in the general curriculum with non-IEP students. But if a child needs an IEP, then part of that IEP must include supplemental instruction that does not take them out of class during the school day - that's an LRE requirement. MCPS should mandate Saturday supplemental education as part of every IEP. Everything I've suggested is consistent with IDEA. |
Anonymous
Your earlier post specifically called out removing students from the general education classroom if they didn’t improve. Then a later post suggested if a student wouldn’t be capable of transitioning to “normal instruction” (i.e., without supports, apparently) then they shouldn’t be with so-called non-IEP students. You’ve posted before. Your dislike of neurodivergent students is perfectly clear. Perhaps you’d be better off teaching in private school that doesn’t allow such students to enroll. You’re also making a series of leaps. Not all students with IEPs require pull outs. Further, some level of pull-outs, say, for speech therapy, are not unreasonable to expect general education teachers to be able to work around— students get pulled out for a variety of reasons, and this is simply one more. You’re also making a huge leap that Saturday services would be either necessary or sufficient. Some wouldn’t need it at all. For others, once-a-week wouldn’t be enough, and during or after-school services throughout the week would be more appropriate. Your tone and emphasis on Saturday servivdes as a “mandatory” provision suggests this is intended as as some kind of disincentive, which is entirely counterproductive. |
Anonymous
Some of your criticisms may be correct. Probably some of my suggestions do need to be refined to comply with IDEA. I'm NOT motivated by dislike of anyone. I'm motivated by seeing a system where resources get allocated to the squeaky-ist parents. Fwiw I'm ND myself. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act is an important law with important protections. But the way it's implemented in MCPS leaves the door open for abuse. And yes, a disincentive for abuse should be built in. Readers may be wondering why a parent in the know would want to get an IEP for their child. Well check out this HS internship program which is only open to students with an IEP. Sure, I'd like to get my kid a premium internship on their college apps too. https://www2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/siteassets/district/departments/special-education/ecip---brochure.pdf Or other college counseling https://www2.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/special-education/programs-services/transition-services-unit/ |
Anonymous
Cute. You'd be singing a different song if you had a kid with special needs. We scrimped and saved (and staycationed for 10 years) because all our money went into a laundry list of saturday therapy sessions. There was no f-ing way we couldn't have done saturday school as well - and MCPS is not set up to do most of the therapy many special needs kids need. |
Anonymous
We did multiple therapies during the week. By Saturday we were exhausted. And, not all kids have academic issues. Ours didn't. Academic needs were fine. It was other issues. Our school put all IEP kids in one classroom with a watered down curriculum. We had to fight hard the following year to make sure our child was not placed in it and the only way they allowed that was because we dropped the IEP as it was the only way out. MCPS fails so many kids. |
Anonymous
After way too many years reading DCUM, I've decided that the definition of "People who value education" on DCUM is "People who do what I do", and the definition of "People who don't value education" on DCUM is "People who do something different from what I do". Oddly, those are also the definitions of "Involved parent" and "Uninvolved parent", respectively. And also the definitions of "Parenting" and "Expecting others to do the parenting for them," respectively. *I don't mean I, me, personally. I mean "I" from the perspective of the person who is using these phrases while posting. |
Anonymous
You both are right. MCPS is corrupt as hell (see operating budget point below) but it also faces a demographic baby boom burden - since everything but 10% goes to pensions and healthcare it likely sends more money to South Carolina (where large swath of retiree MCPS teachers relocated) than to Larlo in Kindergarten 2 at College Gardens Elementary. The salaries are too high compared to all but Fairfax but at least a kid enrolled in an MCPS school today benefits from this expenditure. The rest of it funds a Red state. (MCPS budget 3.1 billion). The operating budget is another 1.6 billion but that’s to keep lights on for all the schools (as well as the place where the vast corrupt deals are- promethium boards, bus camera contracts, HVAC upgrades and who knows what other no bid contracts over the years). |
Anonymous
The operating budget is $3.1 billion, it's Promethean boards, and somehow your information generally seems unreliable. |