How to help MCPS' lowest performing students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Textbooks
Fail kids who are struggling and make them repeat the grade
Make parents pay fees for children who repeat a grade twice.

You really want your nine year old in the same class as an eleven year old who has failed twice? A one year retention can work but age differences do also matter and don’t often help classroom dynamics.
And the fee thing is ridiculous, on so many levels.

How does that even work when there is often a 1-2 year age gap between kids in classes as parents hold their kids back a year in K to make it easier for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For meals, I’d like to see protein for breakfast - like some sort of egg dish. The kids eat pure sugar for breakfast and are starving two hours later, when a kindly teacher might give them a carb snack.

I’d limit the screen time in lower elementary and encourage parents to do the same. More time just reading a book to the class where they sit there and develop their listening and concentration skills.

I’d continually reinforce basic math facts - simple single digit addition, substitution, multiplication way longer than you’d think necessary.

Yes - identifying issues earlier, especially for kids whose parents can’t.

Encourage kids to do their multiplication flashcards at home and test them daily on it at the correct grade level.

Additional recess or outdoor time. Both a morning and afternoon recess or daily PE. Some hard exercise in the morning might really help the kids and lower the amount of time spent on classroom management.

THANK YOU!
Such great points!!

Those are great points, but so many of those require Home support and that’s exactly what so many of these kids lack. some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home? some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home

Most of those actually do not require home support, with intention. Though home support is, of course, helpful. Maybe you’re thinking at home meals? The kids I work with often have breakfast provided at school so I’m referring to school-provided breakfast.

Yes - flash cards (and any homework) are definitely tricky without home support but do work for some kids. It would require a lot of teacher administration but you’d want to incentivize the kids to learn their math facts by ditching some of the flash cards when learned, changing their in class work and tests, etc. Most kids do want to improve. For kids whose parents don’t understand English, math flashcards are a little easier to tell your kid to do than helping with other assignments. But yeah, a lot of kids won’t get assistance at home. You could also add those things into small group or push in/out. Games could be integrated to make it more fun. For the continual reinforcement of math facts, that was intended as a daily in-class exercise.

If kids get what they need in class supported with good materials and textbooks most baring special needs can do homework just fine. People like you dumbing down things and making excuses are the problem.

Please re-read this exchange. But also, there are no textbooks in elementary school. There are math workbooks that stay at school. I don’t think you’re at MCPS?

There are some textbooks in middle and high school for history for math and history depending on the teacher. Some teachers refuse to use them. You can find the elementary workbooks online for free, or you can get copies from some schools or buy them. Or, get your own to supplement. You have options. Yes we are mcps. Our math teacher bought materials off the internet this year. They refuse to use the supplied textbook. We bought the materials to help our child.

The context of multiplication flash cards was elementary school. My own children are older and have been able to borrow the text books from their middle and high schools in a lot of subjects - we’ve never needed to purchase them. You can also borrow the graphing calculator if desired.
I was refuting the argument someone made that my ideas were too difficult for students/families without home support. You then accused me of dumbing things down.

Not sure where you are at but some of our teachers don't have enough books so if you can afford it you are asked to buy it. Others only get classroom sets. We've only had textbooks in math and history. Our English right now has a copy of a few poems, not even the entire book, so we had to buy it if we wanted it. We also had to buy our own graphing calculator for home, they only have classroom sets.

Some of us who support at home spend a lot of time and money doing so and not everyone has the resources but some of the stuff you can get for free with effort but some of your suggestions are to dumb things down.

What suggestions were to dumb things down?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS lowest performing students are not predicted by rich or poor kids. It is predicted by race mainly.

which is correlated to rich and poor

No, it is related to group culture and identity, which is part of the racial identity.

Even a poor and uneducated ORM's kid will do well as it has been proven by the kids of uneducated Chinese restaurant workers in Chinatown in New York who end up in Stuyvesant magnet school.

Some racial, ethnic, national groups prioritize education.

All racial and ethnic groups prioritize education. Some people in each group don't or not in the way you believe they should.

The groups that are not sending their children to school regularly (chronic absenteeism) do not highly prioritize education. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about education but they are obviously prioritizing other things (keeping their job, babysitting toddler siblings, etc.) above education. Unfortunately racial and ethnic group is somewhat predictive of level of priority although every family is different.

You do know there are chronic absentee students in all the major racial/ethnic groups that MCPS measures? White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian.

DP. where is data? asking because don't know not to be snarky.

https://moco360.media/2024/06/21/mcps-chronic-absenteeism-dips-slightly-in-2023-2024-school-year/

If you scroll way down, you will see a chart from a BOE meeting in the Spring. Yes there are chronic absentees in all the racial/ethnic groups, but no, the rates are not similar. Absenteeism is higher in the groups that, unsurprisingly, also have low performance. Absenteeism is also super duper high for MCPS pre-K, which makes me personally hesitant to throw a ton of limited resources at that if it isn’t even utilized. Also, I can totally understand low performance from students who do not have English proficiency and had subpar educational experiences in other countries prior to arrival and are placed in their age appropriate grade. What is mystifying to me is low performance of students who are native speakers of English who have gone through MCPS or schools in the US.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm late to the conversation and not going back to page one to read all the comments. I've been an elementary teacher in MCPS for 23 years and the lack of engaged parenting has increased exponentially in the last decade. I don't know if it's extreme gentle parenting or just IDGAF parenting from others but there are so many more disrespectful and disruptive students than there were five years ago. It's absolutely crazy in schools right now. Even with a much better curriculum base, performance is abysmal for our students of color. Ironically enough, all we talk about in our professional learning is equity and how to help students of color succeed. There is only so much we can do at school. We really need more partnership with caregivers. Parents who will believe us when we try and talk to them about their kids. It's become so adversarial these last few years.

5 years was
1. about time when effects of a "leader" showed up, do you remember - people feeling emboldened to say things which they would've thought twice before and that was true of students in classrooms saying whatever they wanted to their peers "because the president says so". 2. Social media tiktok. 3. Virtual school - students didn't GAF and parents who worked couldn't GAF. 4. Return to in person class and school - catch up socially, emotionally, academically, mentally, physically

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Serious answers only. How can schools raise performances of students at the lowest levels? Free meals help nourish brains and bodies, are they "healthy" is questionable. What else? It it sending home books (lots of books) for them to read? More math practice practice practice. Is it helping change their attitude towards learning, less screen time? Is it identifying learning disorders in Pre-K (if eligible) or by K? Parents/guardians of these students need assistance too but there is time and language and cultural barriers- getting them information about identifying learning issues, ELL services, attitude/views about learning?

Attract more Asian families. Get parents, alumni and star students to volunteer for tutoring.

[Anonymous]

Fail students and make parents pay fee for their child repeating classes.

Differentiate classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Make seperate schools for illegal immigrants.

Make separate schools for kids who do not speak English,

Integrate them in the mainstream schools when they catch up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Public school cannot fix absent or uneducated parenting, OP. That is the main hurdle.

If you're going to pick ONE single act that will impact every child for the better, that would be smaller classroom sizes, so that every child receives more individual feedback from their teacher. Right now, at any grade level, you need to be pretty functional to follow instruction, just because the teacher cannot spend enough time with each student. Students fall through the cracks, especially if their parents don't know how to work the system, request 504s or IEPs, etc.

Of course, I know it's not one act. A lot of schools are overcrowded. It means building more schools, which is always a huge problem in MoCo. It means billions in expenditure that the County tells us we don't have.

During the Baby Boom teachers had classes in elementary that were up to 40 kids. The difference is that they weren’t expected to teach eight different academic levels and kids with a host of disabilities, and discipline was expected. I would vote for tracking as my one change (with advancement by objective tests).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Public school cannot fix absent or uneducated parenting, OP. That is the main hurdle.

If you're going to pick ONE single act that will impact every child for the better, that would be smaller classroom sizes, so that every child receives more individual feedback from their teacher. Right now, at any grade level, you need to be pretty functional to follow instruction, just because the teacher cannot spend enough time with each student. Students fall through the cracks, especially if their parents don't know how to work the system, request 504s or IEPs, etc.

Of course, I know it's not one act. A lot of schools are overcrowded. It means building more schools, which is always a huge problem in MoCo. It means billions in expenditure that the County tells us we don't have.

Agree. But as original question asks, how do you "fix" "uneducated" parenting? How does the community help those parents, make a change so it helps the current students which could help next gen too.

PP you replied to. You don't. You can't. Not in that moment in time. What you do today fixes the next generation. Generational education is a very long-term, selfless exercise that requires higher-order thinking skills, because you cannot receive feedback in real time, and demands a certain vision of the future from the deciding classes.

You just hope that you're doing sufficient work on the next generation, and you vote for politicians that prioritize public education and education, scientific reasoning and Culture with a Capital C.

So... NOT robbing public school budgets to pay for vouchers, or banning books, or claiming that the government can control the weather, or that human-driven climate change doesn't exist. FOR A START.

Are you saying that if I vote for more Democrat candidates, things will improve? Are you even paying attention to reality?

MCPS is located in Montgomery County. Montgomery County has been run exclusively by progressive Democrats for decades.

I have had kids in MCPS for the past dozen years and have watched it continually get worse and worse. All under Democrat rule.

Do you expect me to believe that if I keep voting for these same Democrats that things will somehow improve? That’s laughable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For meals, I’d like to see protein for breakfast - like some sort of egg dish. The kids eat pure sugar for breakfast and are starving two hours later, when a kindly teacher might give them a carb snack.

I’d limit the screen time in lower elementary and encourage parents to do the same. More time just reading a book to the class where they sit there and develop their listening and concentration skills.

I’d continually reinforce basic math facts - simple single digit addition, substitution, multiplication way longer than you’d think necessary.

Yes - identifying issues earlier, especially for kids whose parents can’t.

Encourage kids to do their multiplication flashcards at home and test them daily on it at the correct grade level.

Additional recess or outdoor time. Both a morning and afternoon recess or daily PE. Some hard exercise in the morning might really help the kids and lower the amount of time spent on classroom management.

THANK YOU!
Such great points!!

Those are great points, but so many of those require Home support and that’s exactly what so many of these kids lack. some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home? some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home

Most of those actually do not require home support, with intention. Though home support is, of course, helpful. Maybe you’re thinking at home meals? The kids I work with often have breakfast provided at school so I’m referring to school-provided breakfast.

Yes - flash cards (and any homework) are definitely tricky without home support but do work for some kids. It would require a lot of teacher administration but you’d want to incentivize the kids to learn their math facts by ditching some of the flash cards when learned, changing their in class work and tests, etc. Most kids do want to improve. For kids whose parents don’t understand English, math flashcards are a little easier to tell your kid to do than helping with other assignments. But yeah, a lot of kids won’t get assistance at home. You could also add those things into small group or push in/out. Games could be integrated to make it more fun. For the continual reinforcement of math facts, that was intended as a daily in-class exercise.

If kids get what they need in class supported with good materials and textbooks most baring special needs can do homework just fine. People like you dumbing down things and making excuses are the problem.

Please re-read this exchange. But also, there are no textbooks in elementary school. There are math workbooks that stay at school. I don’t think you’re at MCPS?

There are some textbooks in middle and high school for history for math and history depending on the teacher. Some teachers refuse to use them. You can find the elementary workbooks online for free, or you can get copies from some schools or buy them. Or, get your own to supplement. You have options. Yes we are mcps. Our math teacher bought materials off the internet this year. They refuse to use the supplied textbook. We bought the materials to help our child.

Eureka materials are available free online.
https://greatminds.org/math/eurekamath/family-engagement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious answers only. How can schools raise performances of students at the lowest levels? Free meals help nourish brains and bodies, are they "healthy" is questionable. What else? It it sending home books (lots of books) for them to read? More math practice practice practice. Is it helping change their attitude towards learning, less screen time? Is it identifying learning disorders in Pre-K (if eligible) or by K? Parents/guardians of these students need assistance too but there is time and language and cultural barriers- getting them information about identifying learning issues, ELL services, attitude/views about learning?

Attract more Asian families. Get parents, alumni and star students to volunteer for tutoring.

Since they are considered smart, they left long time ago to Howard Co and NoVa.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Serious answers only. How can schools raise performances of students at the lowest levels? Free meals help nourish brains and bodies, are they "healthy" is questionable. What else? It it sending home books (lots of books) for them to read? More math practice practice practice. Is it helping change their attitude towards learning, less screen time? Is it identifying learning disorders in Pre-K (if eligible) or by K? Parents/guardians of these students need assistance too but there is time and language and cultural barriers- getting them information about identifying learning issues, ELL services, attitude/views about learning?

Attract more Asian families. Get parents, alumni and star students to volunteer for tutoring.

Since they are considered smart, they left long time ago to Howard Co and NoVa.

MoCo county exec went to Asia to try to recruit them to come live in MoCo. Health sciences complex being built around White Flint/"north" Bethesda. If you build, will they come back?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For meals, I’d like to see protein for breakfast - like some sort of egg dish. The kids eat pure sugar for breakfast and are starving two hours later, when a kindly teacher might give them a carb snack.

I’d limit the screen time in lower elementary and encourage parents to do the same. More time just reading a book to the class where they sit there and develop their listening and concentration skills.

I’d continually reinforce basic math facts - simple single digit addition, substitution, multiplication way longer than you’d think necessary.

Yes - identifying issues earlier, especially for kids whose parents can’t.

Encourage kids to do their multiplication flashcards at home and test them daily on it at the correct grade level.

Additional recess or outdoor time. Both a morning and afternoon recess or daily PE. Some hard exercise in the morning might really help the kids and lower the amount of time spent on classroom management.

THANK YOU!
Such great points!!

Those are great points, but so many of those require Home support and that’s exactly what so many of these kids lack. some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home? some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home

Most of those actually do not require home support, with intention. Though home support is, of course, helpful. Maybe you’re thinking at home meals? The kids I work with often have breakfast provided at school so I’m referring to school-provided breakfast.

Yes - flash cards (and any homework) are definitely tricky without home support but do work for some kids. It would require a lot of teacher administration but you’d want to incentivize the kids to learn their math facts by ditching some of the flash cards when learned, changing their in class work and tests, etc. Most kids do want to improve. For kids whose parents don’t understand English, math flashcards are a little easier to tell your kid to do than helping with other assignments. But yeah, a lot of kids won’t get assistance at home. You could also add those things into small group or push in/out. Games could be integrated to make it more fun. For the continual reinforcement of math facts, that was intended as a daily in-class exercise.

If kids get what they need in class supported with good materials and textbooks most baring special needs can do homework just fine. People like you dumbing down things and making excuses are the problem.

Please re-read this exchange. But also, there are no textbooks in elementary school. There are math workbooks that stay at school. I don’t think you’re at MCPS?

There are some textbooks in middle and high school for history for math and history depending on the teacher. Some teachers refuse to use them. You can find the elementary workbooks online for free, or you can get copies from some schools or buy them. Or, get your own to supplement. You have options. Yes we are mcps. Our math teacher bought materials off the internet this year. They refuse to use the supplied textbook. We bought the materials to help our child.

The context of multiplication flash cards was elementary school. My own children are older and have been able to borrow the text books from their middle and high schools in a lot of subjects - we’ve never needed to purchase them. You can also borrow the graphing calculator if desired.
I was refuting the argument someone made that my ideas were too difficult for students/families without home support. You then accused me of dumbing things down.

Not sure where you are at but some of our teachers don't have enough books so if you can afford it you are asked to buy it. Others only get classroom sets. We've only had textbooks in math and history. Our English right now has a copy of a few poems, not even the entire book, so we had to buy it if we wanted it. We also had to buy our own graphing calculator for home, they only have classroom sets.

Some of us who support at home spend a lot of time and money doing so and not everyone has the resources but some of the stuff you can get for free with effort but some of your suggestions are to dumb things down.

If they don’t have the book in the classroom available for home use, it can be requested from CO or the appropriate copies made. Personal graphing calculator for home use is one thing. But don’t let MCPS off the hook for providing the appropriate books for class. Either they provide the book, access to the book/content online or print it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS lowest performing students are not predicted by rich or poor kids. It is predicted by race mainly.

which is correlated to rich and poor

No, it is related to group culture and identity, which is part of the racial identity.

Even a poor and uneducated ORM's kid will do well as it has been proven by the kids of uneducated Chinese restaurant workers in Chinatown in New York who end up in Stuyvesant magnet school.

Some racial, ethnic, national groups prioritize education.

All racial and ethnic groups prioritize education. Some people in each group don't or not in the way you believe they should.

The groups that are not sending their children to school regularly (chronic absenteeism) do not highly prioritize education. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about education but they are obviously prioritizing other things (keeping their job, babysitting toddler siblings, etc.) above education. Unfortunately racial and ethnic group is somewhat predictive of level of priority although every family is different.

You do know there are chronic absentee students in all the major racial/ethnic groups that MCPS measures? White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian.

DP. where is data? asking because don't know not to be snarky.

https://moco360.media/2024/06/21/mcps-chronic-absenteeism-dips-slightly-in-2023-2024-school-year/

If you scroll way down, you will see a chart from a BOE meeting in the Spring. Yes there are chronic absentees in all the racial/ethnic groups, but no, the rates are not similar. Absenteeism is higher in the groups that, unsurprisingly, also have low performance. Absenteeism is also super duper high for MCPS pre-K, which makes me personally hesitant to throw a ton of limited resources at that if it isn’t even utilized. Also, I can totally understand low performance from students who do not have English proficiency and had subpar educational experiences in other countries prior to arrival and are placed in their age appropriate grade. What is mystifying to me is low performance of students who are native speakers of English who have gone through MCPS or schools in the US.

Those charts are meaningless as you have to look at the overall percentages as well to compare them to race and why is this? Better access to health care, transportation, illness, chronic illness, etc.

If kids are underperforming, most likely it is because they didn't get the good foundation they needed in Elementary school in terms of reading, writing and math or they have an undiagnosed learning disability that the school would rather ignore than support.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For meals, I’d like to see protein for breakfast - like some sort of egg dish. The kids eat pure sugar for breakfast and are starving two hours later, when a kindly teacher might give them a carb snack.

I’d limit the screen time in lower elementary and encourage parents to do the same. More time just reading a book to the class where they sit there and develop their listening and concentration skills.

I’d continually reinforce basic math facts - simple single digit addition, substitution, multiplication way longer than you’d think necessary.

Yes - identifying issues earlier, especially for kids whose parents can’t.

Encourage kids to do their multiplication flashcards at home and test them daily on it at the correct grade level.

Additional recess or outdoor time. Both a morning and afternoon recess or daily PE. Some hard exercise in the morning might really help the kids and lower the amount of time spent on classroom management.

THANK YOU!
Such great points!!

Those are great points, but so many of those require Home support and that’s exactly what so many of these kids lack. some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home? some of these kids don’t have good parental oversight or involvement. Who is going to push them to do flashcards at home

Most of those actually do not require home support, with intention. Though home support is, of course, helpful. Maybe you’re thinking at home meals? The kids I work with often have breakfast provided at school so I’m referring to school-provided breakfast.

Yes - flash cards (and any homework) are definitely tricky without home support but do work for some kids. It would require a lot of teacher administration but you’d want to incentivize the kids to learn their math facts by ditching some of the flash cards when learned, changing their in class work and tests, etc. Most kids do want to improve. For kids whose parents don’t understand English, math flashcards are a little easier to tell your kid to do than helping with other assignments. But yeah, a lot of kids won’t get assistance at home. You could also add those things into small group or push in/out. Games could be integrated to make it more fun. For the continual reinforcement of math facts, that was intended as a daily in-class exercise.

If kids get what they need in class supported with good materials and textbooks most baring special needs can do homework just fine. People like you dumbing down things and making excuses are the problem.

Please re-read this exchange. But also, there are no textbooks in elementary school. There are math workbooks that stay at school. I don’t think you’re at MCPS?

There are some textbooks in middle and high school for history for math and history depending on the teacher. Some teachers refuse to use them. You can find the elementary workbooks online for free, or you can get copies from some schools or buy them. Or, get your own to supplement. You have options. Yes we are mcps. Our math teacher bought materials off the internet this year. They refuse to use the supplied textbook. We bought the materials to help our child.

The context of multiplication flash cards was elementary school. My own children are older and have been able to borrow the text books from their middle and high schools in a lot of subjects - we’ve never needed to purchase them. You can also borrow the graphing calculator if desired.
I was refuting the argument someone made that my ideas were too difficult for students/families without home support. You then accused me of dumbing things down.

Not sure where you are at but some of our teachers don't have enough books so if you can afford it you are asked to buy it. Others only get classroom sets. We've only had textbooks in math and history. Our English right now has a copy of a few poems, not even the entire book, so we had to buy it if we wanted it. We also had to buy our own graphing calculator for home, they only have classroom sets.

Some of us who support at home spend a lot of time and money doing so and not everyone has the resources but some of the stuff you can get for free with effort but some of your suggestions are to dumb things down.

If they don’t have the book in the classroom available for home use, it can be requested from CO or the appropriate copies made. Personal graphing calculator for home use is one thing. But don’t let MCPS off the hook for providing the appropriate books for class. Either they provide the book, access to the book/content online or print it.

Online books don't work for all kids. And, no they don't provide books in all classes and you have to ask.