Lottery system

[Anonymous]

What do you do if your kid receives the letters being identified as gifted and talented but consistently not being selected for the gifted program? It's OK for the 3rd grade, but by middle school, classes became boring. What do you do to help your kid thrive? MoCo is backward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you do if your kid receives the letters being identified as gifted and talented but consistently not being selected for the gifted program? It's OK for the 3rd grade, but by middle school, classes became boring. What do you do to help your kid thrive? MoCo is backward.

That's what's happened to us. We do the best we can with the home schools. Middle school has actually been substantially better than ES (but we were at an ES without ELC).

[Anonymous]

Supplement at home, try again for MS, when that doesn't happen wait till HS when they can do real honors and AP classes. And, in MS have them start algebra in 6th or 7th depending on what your school offers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Supplement at home, try again for MS, when that doesn't happen wait till HS when they can do real honors and AP classes. And, in MS have them start algebra in 6th or 7th depending on what your school offers.

Generally need the earlier path to start in ES, and need to lobby the principals to make that available.

[Anonymous]

Basis in Mclean might be the only option here. Half of the 6th grade starts Algebra I.

[Anonymous]

The letter is too 20% right? Most of those kids are just fine in the regular schools. I agree the lottery is not a rational way to select kids for a gifted program. Remember lots of top 2% are not going.

[Anonymous]

Hopkins CTY is nice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins CTY is nice.

Thank god we can afford to dump tens of thousands into these outside programs for our kids since school these days only cares about equity.

[Anonymous]

I am curious if are they 100% lottery based? Do they put student info. into computer system, and selected are picked randomly from AI? I have been wondering if someone's parents are active school volunteer, teacher recommendation, kids are really struggling with boring curriculum or really gifted (>130 from some outside testing) or other such other factors may increase the chances under lottery system?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hopkins CTY is nice.

Thank god we can afford to dump tens of thousands into these outside programs for our kids since school these days only cares about equity.

We like CTY also but why is it so expensive?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am curious if are they 100% lottery based? Do they put student info. into computer system, and selected are picked randomly from AI? I have been wondering if someone's parents are active school volunteer, teacher recommendation, kids are really struggling with boring curriculum or really gifted (>130 from some outside testing) or other such other factors may increase the chances under lottery system?

The parent of one of the students who got selected for our CES is very involved in PTA and school volunteering. That child is definitely not top 2% and I am suspicious there was favoritism. I know CES and other magnet programs are not only for the top 2% (though they should be) but I find it interesting why that child got picked. I don’t think it is a random lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am curious if are they 100% lottery based? Do they put student info. into computer system, and selected are picked randomly from AI? I have been wondering if someone's parents are active school volunteer, teacher recommendation, kids are really struggling with boring curriculum or really gifted (>130 from some outside testing) or other such other factors may increase the chances under lottery system?

The parent of one of the students who got selected for our CES is very involved in PTA and school volunteering. That child is definitely not top 2% and I am suspicious there was favoritism. I know CES and other magnet programs are not only for the top 2% (though they should be) but I find it interesting why that child got picked. I don’t think it is a random lottery.

The only way we'd know is if they laid it all on the table for us to review, both detailed criteria/pool heuristic/lottery mechanism and detailed but de-identified student profile results of the lottery process (whole pop, pool pop, offered pop, admitted pop). MCPS doesn't do that even for the BOE to review. Lynne Harris had campaigned on open data, but either got distracted or found too much resistance from the rest.

As far as MCPS says, it's a straight computer-based lottery from the identified pool. Identification for the pool is where there's a bit of wiggle -- local norms for MAP cutoffs among schools with similar FARMS rates and additional adjustments for students receiving srevices (individual FARMS status, 504, IEP, EML). Aside from MAP, they've got grades and reading level. No teacher recommendations or outside testing (except for those coming from private or home school). One wonders if they have the computer lottery algorithm do things like geographical or gender smoothing so that there aren't far-from-expected-value results (e.g., far greater percentage of one gender selected vs. what the pool has).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What do you do if your kid receives the letters being identified as gifted and talented but consistently not being selected for the gifted program? It's OK for the 3rd grade, but by middle school, classes became boring. What do you do to help your kid thrive? MoCo is backward.

You do realize that a high percentage of kids are identified as GT right? A truly gifted kid is testing 99% several grades up.

Unfortunately the ES and MS GT programs are dumbed down from what they used to be. I don't think you are missing much. Just hold out for HS since they have not ruined those yet.

My advice would be to find some outside activities to keep them interested. Reading, chess, puzzles, music lessons. And let them enjoy being a kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am curious if are they 100% lottery based? Do they put student info. into computer system, and selected are picked randomly from AI? I have been wondering if someone's parents are active school volunteer, teacher recommendation, kids are really struggling with boring curriculum or really gifted (>130 from some outside testing) or other such other factors may increase the chances under lottery system?

The parent of one of the students who got selected for our CES is very involved in PTA and school volunteering. That child is definitely not top 2% and I am suspicious there was favoritism. I know CES and other magnet programs are not only for the top 2% (though they should be) but I find it interesting why that child got picked. I don’t think it is a random lottery.

Wrong, I am heavily involved in PTA and school, my kid was waitlisted because he didn’t make the cut. There is no favoritism, central office makes the selection, the school can only inform you the decision. However, when DS were waitlisted(pre pandemic), and some of my friends kids who made it shared their stats with me, and it’s true they all scored higher on MAP and CogAt. Some kids who doesn’t seem that bright are good test takers(also good guessers because they said they yolo half of the questions.) so it’s not always what it appears to be.

[Anonymous]

PP here, if the student for compact math was at the borderline, the teacher could advocate to the principal, but it depends on the space availability and the teacher. I heard some successful cases and some not so successful cases.