Why w school students not preferred in Blair magnet

[Anonymous]

"There are over 400 students in my child's middle-school grade. And in most of my child's classes, there are more than 30 students per class. I'm not seeing much opportunity here for a given teacher to acquire a thorough knowledge of a given student."

They are not looking for thorough knowledge. They are looking for THE 4 out of the 400. These kid's reputations have been growing since K.

The kids know who the 4 will be why wouldn't the teachers?

"This is your fiction. First I don't believe there is an exceptional group set off from the pack, that's contrary to the concept of a curve. Second even if there were, in addition to including math geniuses it would scoop up a fair number of the future math cranks of the world, people who for whatever reason obsess on math but arrest in their own thoughts. There'd be no way for the teacher or the test to distinguish between raw talent and such a person and there's no need to because kids deserve the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, what probably is obvious to the teacher is parents who have a deeper interest in the magnet than that of their kid's, and no doubt such parents are over represented in the group mentioned. I mean really, last year of middle school and they don't realize back to school night isn't for individual discussions?!? Glad the teacher has a sense of humor about it, as surely this is just the first of many such interactions before the end of eighth grade."

There are only 11,000 or so kids in the 8th grade. The curve does not become smooth until you get to many MILLIONS when you are 5 standard deviations out. I know kids in that group who have ALREADY scored high enough to be NM semifinalists. They ARE 5 standard deviations out.

You could be onto something when you mention the geniuses and the cranks. By 8th grade, the teachers and other kids may know who the cranks are but parents, not so much. While some 8th grade cranks deserve the benefit of the doubt, some are so cranky already that they can safely be ruled out for someone at the beginning of the smooth part of the curve. This alone could be what the teacher was rolling their eyes about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"There are over 400 students in my child's middle-school grade. And in most of my child's classes, there are more than 30 students per class. I'm not seeing much opportunity here for a given teacher to acquire a thorough knowledge of a given student."

They are not looking for thorough knowledge. They are looking for THE 4 out of the 400. These kid's reputations have been growing since K.

The kids know who the 4 will be why wouldn't the teachers?

But actually the kids don't know, and neither do the teachers.

[Anonymous]

Well weren't most of the National Merit Finalists from the Bethesda area but at the Blair program? And when did Wootton become a W school? Growing up here the W stands for Wealthy and White and it really is Whitman and Churchill with BCC in the mix in 3rd place. Somewhere in the late 90s WJ self nominated its self to tag along with the pack and people more our less accepted that but I draw the line at Wootton which isn't really wealthy or that white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well weren't most of the National Merit Finalists from the Bethesda area but at the Blair program? And when did Wootton become a W school? Growing up here the W stands for Wealthy and White and it really is Whitman and Churchill with BCC in the mix in 3rd place. Somewhere in the late 90s WJ self nominated its self to tag along with the pack and people more our less accepted that but I draw the line at Wootton which isn't really wealthy or that white.

Wootton is 46% white and has 5% FARMS. That makes it one of the wealthy/white-est schools in Montgomery county.

For comparison, Walter Johnson is 56% white and has 7% FARMS. BCC is whiter (58%) but less wealthy (12% FARMS). Sherwood is also whiter (52%) but less wealthy (17% FARMS). Damascus and Poolesville are also whiter (62%) but, well, they're in Damascus and Poolesville...

(Yes, I know that FARMS is not the only measure of wealth, but "non-poor" doesn't start with a w.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"There are over 400 students in my child's middle-school grade. And in most of my child's classes, there are more than 30 students per class. I'm not seeing much opportunity here for a given teacher to acquire a thorough knowledge of a given student."

They are not looking for thorough knowledge. They are looking for THE 4 out of the 400. These kid's reputations have been growing since K.

The kids know who the 4 will be why wouldn't the teachers?

"This is your fiction. First I don't believe there is an exceptional group set off from the pack, that's contrary to the concept of a curve. Second even if there were, in addition to including math geniuses it would scoop up a fair number of the future math cranks of the world, people who for whatever reason obsess on math but arrest in their own thoughts. There'd be no way for the teacher or the test to distinguish between raw talent and such a person and there's no need to because kids deserve the benefit of the doubt. Regardless, what probably is obvious to the teacher is parents who have a deeper interest in the magnet than that of their kid's, and no doubt such parents are over represented in the group mentioned. I mean really, last year of middle school and they don't realize back to school night isn't for individual discussions?!? Glad the teacher has a sense of humor about it, as surely this is just the first of many such interactions before the end of eighth grade."

There are only 11,000 or so kids in the 8th grade. The curve does not become smooth until you get to many MILLIONS when you are 5 standard deviations out. I know kids in that group who have ALREADY scored high enough to be NM semifinalists. They ARE 5 standard deviations out.

You could be onto something when you mention the geniuses and the cranks. By 8th grade, the teachers and other kids may know who the cranks are but parents, not so much. While some 8th grade cranks deserve the benefit of the doubt, some are so cranky already that they can safely be ruled out for someone at the beginning of the smooth part of the curve. This alone could be what the teacher was rolling their eyes about.

5 standard deviations, that's 1 in a 1.7 million. How many of those can be found amongst the 11,000 MCPS eighth graders (given only 180 should be in the entire US population)? By contrast National Merit Semi finalists are by definition two standard deviations, on the PSAT that's 1/370 (amongst test takers). Now granted doing that by eighth grade is harder but it's not five sigma hard. Why shouldn't I conclude you're a crank? What you say about what teachers know, what students know, the two kind of students admitted to magnets, this is your fiction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:" OP - I know you are not going to believe this but magnets are HARD to get in. No more, no less. "

This is NOT the complete story. There are two groups of kids that get into the magnets. One group is just so far out on the bell curve that getting into a magnet is simply a matter of not being a discipline problem in MS. The other group is picked from a much larger group of smart but not exceptional students. This picking is VERY competitive. Given the level of MCPS MS classes, the difference between the two groups is almost impossible to observe from grades but their middle school teachers KNOW. This is why the one MS teacher who posted on this thread would smile to themselves when the parents of a smart but not exceptional student would claim their DC was going to Blair.

It's amazing that the MS teacher would already KNOW who was who by back-to-school night, though, isn't it?

The county crunches stats. You didn't know that?

If there's a chance that a kid WON'T have a peer group at his home school b/c his/her test scores surpass the average, then that child has an edge over kids in "other" clusters.

[Anonymous]

DCUM is the only place where anyone thinks Wooton is a "W" school. Maybe with all the Asians it is now up there, but it is still a notch below the real W schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The county crunches stats. You didn't know that?

If there's a chance that a kid WON'T have a peer group at his home school b/c his/her test scores surpass the average, then that child has an edge over kids in "other" clusters.

What is the source of your information?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DCUM is the only place where anyone thinks Wooton is a "W" school. Maybe with all the Asians it is now up there, but it is still a notch below the real W schools.

But these changes have not been distributed equally through the county. Minority and low-income students are increasingly concentrated in Montgomery’s east and north. Meanwhile, its vaunted “W high schools” — Wootton, Whitman, Walter Johnson and Winston Churchill — have experienced little change or, in some cases, have become whiter and richer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-great-montgomery-county-schools-they-were-once-maybe-they-can-be-again/2013/09/06/e5bb70c0-15ab-11e3-be6e-dc6ae8a5b3a8_story.html

I'm pretty sure that Dan Reed has better things to do than hang out on DCUM arguing about who a "W" school is. Actually so do I, but here I am anyway...

[Anonymous]

"5 standard deviations, that's 1 in a 1.7 million. How many of those can be found amongst the 11,000 MCPS eighth graders (given only 180 should be in the entire US population)? By contrast National Merit Semi finalists are by definition two standard deviations, on the PSAT that's 1/370 (amongst test takers). Now granted doing that by eighth grade is harder but it's not five sigma hard. Why shouldn't I conclude you're a crank? What you say about what teachers know, what students know, the two kind of students admitted to magnets, this is your fiction."

There are lots of ways to classify the distributions of test scores. Most recognize that scores are more spread out than a standard distribution. To
start with an example, so we don't spend a lot of time redefining each others terms, consider:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#/media/File:Terman1916Fig2IQDistribution.png

Those in the my "5th standard deviation" from the mean on this curve would have IQs from 136 to 145. Yes, I count the standard deviation that includes the mean.

Of the 905 students tested 0.55 percent or 5 students are in the group I am talking about. Of the 11,000+ 8th graders that would be 61 students.

Of those 61, some don't apply to a magnet at all. Some only apply to the SMAC and some only to RMIB or Poolsville. Roughly, these numbers match
the numbers of semifinalists across the county and at Blair.

All I am saying is that this group's applications and how they appear in class is qualitatively different than the 363 who would be in the 126 to 135
grouping who need to be quantitatively compared to determine which will make the magnet cut.

Did I cherry pick a study that supports my definition of 5th standard deviation, kind of, but that study has been picked MANY times before. On the other hand,
day in and day out I deal with people in scientific circles that make up both sides of this divide. The divide is not just present in school or on tests, it is
real and can easily be observed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:"5 standard deviations, that's 1 in a 1.7 million. How many of those can be found amongst the 11,000 MCPS eighth graders (given only 180 should be in the entire US population)? By contrast National Merit Semi finalists are by definition two standard deviations, on the PSAT that's 1/370 (amongst test takers). Now granted doing that by eighth grade is harder but it's not five sigma hard. Why shouldn't I conclude you're a crank? What you say about what teachers know, what students know, the two kind of students admitted to magnets, this is your fiction."

There are lots of ways to classify the distributions of test scores. Most recognize that scores are more spread out than a standard distribution. To
start with an example, so we don't spend a lot of time redefining each others terms, consider:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_classification#/media/File:Terman1916Fig2IQDistribution.png

Those in the my "5th standard deviation" from the mean on this curve would have IQs from 136 to 145. Yes, I count the standard deviation that includes the mean.

Of the 905 students tested 0.55 percent or 5 students are in the group I am talking about. Of the 11,000+ 8th graders that would be 61 students.

Of those 61, some don't apply to a magnet at all. Some only apply to the SMAC and some only to RMIB or Poolsville. Roughly, these numbers match
the numbers of semifinalists across the county and at Blair.

All I am saying is that this group's applications and how they appear in class is qualitatively different than the 363 who would be in the 126 to 135
grouping who need to be quantitatively compared to determine which will make the magnet cut.

Did I cherry pick a study that supports my definition of 5th standard deviation, kind of, but that study has been picked MANY times before. On the other hand,
day in and day out I deal with people in scientific circles that make up both sides of this divide. The divide is not just present in school or on tests, it is
real and can easily be observed.

Your terminology is wrong. You're looking at a bar chart where IQs of students are grouped into ranges 10 points wide. That is not the meaning of [i]standard deviation[/iin particular, it's incorrect to call the fifth such group, IQ 135-145, fifth standard deviation. I don't really want to define terms or talk IQ tests, but a quick google of either would show an IQ of 130 is the cutoff for two standard deviations and an IQ of 145 is the cut off for 3 standard deviations.

[Anonymous]

There are a number of white / Asian gifted kids at the W schools who choose to not apply because of the time it takes to travel back and forth from the magnet schools. Our schools could be better regarding challenging programs, but staying at our home schools provide other opportunities for after school activities. Kids need to be well rounded and academics is just one part of the equation. Why waste 2 hours of everyday on a bus?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, here's how I understand OP, and it goes point to unconscious bias that has come up on this topics discussion-

Looks like OP is not saying his/her DC is super smart.
Or W kids are smarter or non w kids are not smart or there is any desperation to get DC in to magnet or W kids are underrepresented in magnet.
The point raised is that why there should be equal distribution from each school for magnet as it should be totally merit based. Second, after the equal distribution or so , say there is one slot and committee has two equally good applications- one from w school student and other non-w student, OPs point is that committee would lean on selecting non-w kid with that unconscious bias that w kid's home school is anyway a good high school program.

And this is proved through numerous comments posted on this topic by the posters.

So there is unconscious bias towards w kids if there are equal competitors from non w schools.

Which posters proved that the admissions committee unconsciously selects the kid from the non-wealthy/white school over the kid from the wealthy/white school on grounds that the wealthy/white school is good anyway?

I'd like to know this as well. One person said they suspect this to be true, several said it is emphatically not true. We literally have no proof that this is the case.

[Anonymous]

Why in a public school system do we have programs that are so selective that kids are excluded from participating? All children who wishes to advance their education and do the most challenging programs MCPS has available should have access to those programs. If the desire is so great, why isn't MCPS creating more programs and slots even if that means expanding the programs to more schools? Obviously, these programs are successful in churning out highly educated students so why not have similar pathways at all schools?

[Anonymous]

There certainly have been posters who say they have knowledge of the process and this is not true. It seems everyone is working on anecdotal evidence and possibly nothing more than what they construe from this forum.

I've heard people claim the quality of the home school is considered (basically OPs premise, W school student are at a disadvantage because they have a better fall back position). But this really makes no sense, if for no other reason, that would be the selection committee, MCPS, admitting HS clusters are unequal. I'm willing to believe this isn't happening.

The other claim I've heard is something more vague to the effect of if a student really needs to be in the magnet, they will be. Some people hear this to be the same as the first claim. But I take it to be something more like, the extremely socially awkward science obsessed kid might be placed in the magnet even if their score is borderline, because they need the support of a magnet and just couldn't survive emotionally at a regular HS. No one seems to articulate this clearly and for that reason alone it would seem hard for a selection committee to either have this as a stated goal or to have a mechanism to identify such students if it were. Nonetheless there seem to be posters who believe this happens, and whenever they make these vague claims, it causes confusion. Still, if this does happen it is a fair target for discussion, because it would mean between two students with good but not exceptional scores, the more socially maladjusted would win out.