Monique Felder – Equity Centered Leader

[Anonymous]

Her bio states that she is an equity centered leader.

How does this improve student’s education?

How do we measure the effectiveness of an equity centered leader?

[Anonymous]

Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

[Anonymous]

Let's give her a chance.

The point of our current crisis is that bullying and harassment of people, staff and students, is baked into the school district's culture. Supervisors who bully and harass are endemic and the retaliation to those who try to stand up for themselves is swift and unrelenting.

Just be grateful if your students are in a relatively healthy school environment. Get off the anti-equity bandwagon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

If “level the playing field” means “dilute academics” then it helps no child, and hurts children of color the most.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

Different poster but what reports would show how equity leads to better outcomes

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

If “level the playing field” means “dilute academics” then it helps no child, and hurts children of color the most.

Yeah but the optics on equity are too good to pass up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

Different poster but what reports would show how equity leads to better outcomes

Astroturf troll. GTFO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Her bio states that she is an equity centered leader.

How does this improve student’s education?

How do we measure the effectiveness of an equity centered leader?

Usually, this means imposing values on students they don't share while neglecting everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

+1 I know that MCPS has not done a great job with this, but it's actually possible to apply an equity lens AND to provide a rigorous education to all children. The problem is that Dr. McKnight lurched from one trendy idea to the next without taking time to ensure that any of the trends were actually working.

To take a specific example, there was a brief moment in time when it seemed like MCPS might be close to making much-needed changes to the CES and MS magnet selection processes. By testing all kids instead of just those whose parents knew to sign them up, prioritizing kids with no strong home school cohort, and "tracking" kids who did have a strong peer cohort together, MCPS was close to a better solution. It wasn't perfect, but it would have meant an enriched curriculum and strong cohort for many more children than the status quo.

Then it just sort of never happened. Maybe it was partially the ill-conceived lawsuit, but also a total lack of follow-through on the part of the Central Office.

The same argument can be made about restorative justice. When implemented with fidelity by well-trained teachers/staff, and appropriately resourced, there's a lot of evidence that it can work. The problem is that MCPS just announced that we have restorative justice now, but without any of the scaffolding or training or resources that could have made it successful.

[Anonymous]

It’s all smoke. As sone as she comes on board the firs thing she cuts is the virtual academy. That’s not equity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it attempts to improve the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

There is no evidence their system-wide changes help anyone. If they could focus equity attempts on individualized case management and instruction, they'd have a shot. But they will never be eliminate the equities that the children arrive to school with. There's nothing they can do about home life/income/shelter/food/medical care/effective mental health care. Nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s all smoke. As sone as she comes on board the firs thing she cuts is the virtual academy. That’s not equity.

It looks like she's evaluating both Innovative Schools and the Virtual Academy. This is correct, as the data on both shows some real concerns. Innovative Schools kids aren't showing any gains compared to traditional calendar kids despite ostensibly being in school an extra 40-some days. Virtual Academy kids underperform compared to peers, with underperformance the most drastic among traditionally marginalized groups, including poor/working class kids and kids of color.

In both cases, it seems that an evidence-based approach would be to move back to a proven model of a traditional calendar and in-school education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

+1 I know that MCPS has not done a great job with this, but it's actually possible to apply an equity lens AND to provide a rigorous education to all children. The problem is that Dr. McKnight lurched from one trendy idea to the next without taking time to ensure that any of the trends were actually working.

To take a specific example, there was a brief moment in time when it seemed like MCPS might be close to making much-needed changes to the CES and MS magnet selection processes. By testing all kids instead of just those whose parents knew to sign them up, prioritizing kids with no strong home school cohort, and "tracking" kids who did have a strong peer cohort together, MCPS was close to a better solution. It wasn't perfect, but it would have meant an enriched curriculum and strong cohort for many more children than the status quo.

Then it just sort of never happened. Maybe it was partially the ill-conceived lawsuit, but also a total lack of follow-through on the part of the Central Office.

The same argument can be made about restorative justice. When implemented with fidelity by well-trained teachers/staff, and appropriately resourced, there's a lot of evidence that it can work. The problem is that MCPS just announced that we have restorative justice now, but without any of the scaffolding or training or resources that could have made it successful.

This did happen with CES and the central office followed through on implementing it! Now kids don’t have to apply to CES but instead are selected into a pool by central office after a review of all students. The standards a student needs to meet in order to be in the pool vary depending on the FARMS rate of the student’s home school, so for example, a child in a high FARMS school can qualify for the pool with a MAP-R score in the range of the 70th percentile nationwide, while a student in a low FARMS school will qualify only if they exceed the 95th percentile nationwide. This benefits kids who don’t have a strong cohort at their home school and gives them an edge over kids coming from schools with a very strong cohort who won’t necessarily benefit as much from the CES cohort.

Once kids qualify for the pool, selections are a random lottery. This helps cut down on people being able to game the system since it’s completely random among those who qualify for the pool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s all smoke. As sone as she comes on board the firs thing she cuts is the virtual academy. That’s not equity.

It looks like she's evaluating both Innovative Schools and the Virtual Academy. This is correct, as the data on both shows some real concerns. Innovative Schools kids aren't showing any gains compared to traditional calendar kids despite ostensibly being in school an extra 40-some days. Virtual Academy kids underperform compared to peers, with underperformance the most drastic among traditionally marginalized groups, including poor/working class kids and kids of color.

In both cases, it seems that an evidence-based approach would be to move back to a proven model of a traditional calendar and in-school education.

There is not accurate data on the virtual academy as many of us don’t take our kids to the home schools for the testing. We don’t feel welcome at those schools as they don’t include our kids as we were promised. And, if you are worried about equity there is a large minority population in the school so that would hurt minority children if you shut it down. So, you cannot just look at test scores without looking at the bigger picture. The only families I know doing the testing are those kids with ieps to justify continued services.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Relax, she is interim.
However, since you are asking - it improves the opportunities for students who historically have been left out. I get that that doesn't help your child, but it helps many children if color to level out the playing field.

+1 I know that MCPS has not done a great job with this, but it's actually possible to apply an equity lens AND to provide a rigorous education to all children. The problem is that Dr. McKnight lurched from one trendy idea to the next without taking time to ensure that any of the trends were actually working.

To take a specific example, there was a brief moment in time when it seemed like MCPS might be close to making much-needed changes to the CES and MS magnet selection processes. By testing all kids instead of just those whose parents knew to sign them up, prioritizing kids with no strong home school cohort, and "tracking" kids who did have a strong peer cohort together, MCPS was close to a better solution. It wasn't perfect, but it would have meant an enriched curriculum and strong cohort for many more children than the status quo.

Then it just sort of never happened. Maybe it was partially the ill-conceived lawsuit, but also a total lack of follow-through on the part of the Central Office.

The same argument can be made about restorative justice. When implemented with fidelity by well-trained teachers/staff, and appropriately resourced, there's a lot of evidence that it can work. The problem is that MCPS just announced that we have restorative justice now, but without any of the scaffolding or training or resources that could have made it successful.

This did happen with CES and the central office followed through on implementing it! Now kids don’t have to apply to CES but instead are selected into a pool by central office after a review of all students. The standards a student needs to meet in order to be in the pool vary depending on the FARMS rate of the student’s home school, so for example, a child in a high FARMS school can qualify for the pool with a MAP-R score in the range of the 70th percentile nationwide, while a student in a low FARMS school will qualify only if they exceed the 95th percentile nationwide. This benefits kids who don’t have a strong cohort at their home school and gives them an edge over kids coming from schools with a very strong cohort who won’t necessarily benefit as much from the CES cohort.

Once kids qualify for the pool, selections are a random lottery. This helps cut down on people being able to game the system since it’s completely random among those who qualify for the pool.

They need to add more gifted programs and have different levels like other school districts.