Brookings Institution article about the new MCPS middle school magnet selection process

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

^^^(I personally don't think that the four magnet middle schools in the county are scary gang middle schools, but I know for a fact that there are people who do think they are)

I do think the crime in the area is a bigger influencer than people think. There are more people in the west who are willing to except the long bus ride to the Poolesville magnet -which is farther away than you think and a nightmare in bad weather. The same people decide the bus ride to SS is too far. If you pull up the crime maps for the areas around the Silver Spring schools it is pretty bad.

Honestly, its fine if some people don't want to go to school in Silver Spring because of the crime. Let them stay in their home schools but don't block the kids who score at the very top and want to go.

For people whose application magnet high school is Poolesville, the application magnet middle schools are not in Silver Spring. The application magnet middle school programs for these people are at Roberto Clemente MS and MLK Jr MS, both of which are in Germantown, not Silver Spring. This fact is rarely discussed on DCUM, but nonetheless, a fact it is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We love the new enriched classes that came out of the cohort criteria. Our DD takes more rigorous classes without spending hours on the bus. Not to mention the many students who may have not been admitted or adequately challenged without this change. It seems like a huge win for MCPS.

Troll x1000 of your parroting posts

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

The median score of accepted students would not tell you that.

So what would then. If the scores of students accepted from some middle school clusters were lower than the scores of students rejected from more high performing clusters that would tell us that the peer cohort device had an undue influence on the selection process this year. How can we verify if this is what MCPS did?

You need the average/mean score for each MS and/or the cutoff scores. MCPS has never released that data and I doubt it will now. Also, many people on this board put too much emphasis on the median scores. All it told you in the past is what a PP stated, that half the students scored above or below that number. Yes, HGCs like Cold Spring had a higher median by a few points historically, but that doesn't rule out that there were kids that got in with lower scores-- in fact, it confirms that some kids did, but we don't know how many and what was the lowest score.

I think MCPS spread the seats amongst all of the MS schools. They accepted the top few students from each school. Does that mean some kids scored lower than others in some of the criteria, I am sure that is true. But that is why MCPS won't release the data because confidentiality can't be maintained if only 2-4 students got in per ES or center program.

This may well be what they did but that is grossly unfair to students from schools feeding into Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIM, Sligo and Cabin John. There are tons of kids who were shut out. I think the enriched courses are a fantastic idea for the top 20% of students in the county but the top 5% of students do need something different - they need a true magnet program. I think MCPS should consider putting a new magnet middle school in the Western part of the county.

I agree that MCPS needs to add more magnet seats and/or open another magnet in the western part of the country. I believe that was the main point of the Brookings article. MCPS doesn't want to financially invest in educating this population like the Florida example. I think fighting over who got 200 spaces and how MCPS did it is a waste of energy. The outrage on this and many other threads should be directed at opening new MS magnets and/or adding more than two magnet classes to MS schools with top 5% students.

g&T is supposed to be for top 5%, ask any reputable School of Ed college. Mcps is subscale is size, <1%, shows they don’t care about that segment of students. And they don’t. They don’t care about the top third and make parents and tutors and camps challenge the students or create any depth and breadth of subject matter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS shouldn't release median scores because they'd tell us absolutely nothing other than what we already know.

Yes.. That students with much higher test scores weren't admitted because of peer cohort; that the threshold was indeed lowered.

The median score of accepted students would not tell you that.

So what would then. If the scores of students accepted from some middle school clusters were lower than the scores of students rejected from more high performing clusters that would tell us that the peer cohort device had an undue influence on the selection process this year. How can we verify if this is what MCPS did?

You need the average/mean score for each MS and/or the cutoff scores. MCPS has never released that data and I doubt it will now. Also, many people on this board put too much emphasis on the median scores. All it told you in the past is what a PP stated, that half the students scored above or below that number. Yes, HGCs like Cold Spring had a higher median by a few points historically, but that doesn't rule out that there were kids that got in with lower scores-- in fact, it confirms that some kids did, but we don't know how many and what was the lowest score.

I think MCPS spread the seats amongst all of the MS schools. They accepted the top few students from each school. Does that mean some kids scored lower than others in some of the criteria, I am sure that is true. But that is why MCPS won't release the data because confidentiality can't be maintained if only 2-4 students got in per ES or center program.

This may well be what they did but that is grossly unfair to students from schools feeding into Hoover, Frost, Pyle, SSIM, Sligo and Cabin John. There are tons of kids who were shut out. I think the enriched courses are a fantastic idea for the top 20% of students in the county but the top 5% of students do need something different - they need a true magnet program. I think MCPS should consider putting a new magnet middle school in the Western part of the county.

I agree that MCPS needs to add more magnet seats and/or open another magnet in the western part of the country. I believe that was the main point of the Brookings article. MCPS doesn't want to financially invest in educating this population like the Florida example. I think fighting over who got 200 spaces and how MCPS did it is a waste of energy. The outrage on this and many other threads should be directed at opening new MS magnets and/or adding more than two magnet classes to MS schools with top 5% students.

I completely agree. The one thing the universal screening showed us (and that MCPS has admitted), is that there are far more kids who need enriched classes than spots that are available. I would have kept the old test that actually showed differentiation at the top, rather than the cogat. But, I get it, make the pool larger with the cogat. Why not add a magnet school in the west county. It will free up spaces for more URM in east county magnets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We love the new enriched classes that came out of the cohort criteria. Our DD takes more rigorous classes without spending hours on the bus. Not to mention the many students who may have not been admitted or adequately challenged without this change. It seems like a huge win for MCPS.

Can you tell me which MS your kids attend?

My neighbor has not had the same experience so far in 6th Grade at a home school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do t like the constant lies here from one individual. I really hope Jeff tracks and sees if she is coming from a MCPS server or something.

A) ces and magnet is not at all a “merit based system”. Merit based means quantitative testing based, like the NYC magnets were: stack ranked scores, take the top 400 scorers, publish them

B) MCPS Starr and smith have consistently said for four years that their focus is on the achievement gap and they feel adding a few diversity kids to the fixed ces and magnet programs may do that.

C) There is something tax payers, students, parents can do. And that is vote, file formal complaints, ask for transparency, ask for more centers, ask for better and more challenging curricula/more subject matter, and demand accountability.

A few diversity kids will never close the achievement gap. So I don't think that's their reasoning. I think they would like more kids to have the opportunity though.

I think they just didn't like the optics of the magnet programs being majority white and Asian. My kids went through a majority hispanic elementary school. The hispanic families we have gotten to know (middle class, speak better, but not perfect English) never seemed to care at all about their kids attending the magnets. And they know about them. It was just not a priority. They wanted kids to be with friends at their local school. Never heard them complaining about the curriculum, other than the weird and annoying way math is taught in 2.0 & no textbooks available. Most of the native born families (including myself) are this way as well. Let the Asians have the magnets. If the parent cares about education, their kid will succeed in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We love the new enriched classes that came out of the cohort criteria. Our DD takes more rigorous classes without spending hours on the bus. Not to mention the many students who may have not been admitted or adequately challenged without this change. It seems like a huge win for MCPS.

Can you tell me which MS your kids attend?

My neighbor has not had the same experience so far in 6th Grade at a home school.

yes tell me too, since it most definitely is not our MS "enriched classes". what's your home MS you are raving about? We've had two disappointing years after HGC for 4th and 5th grade.

[Anonymous]

on the flipside, we still have zero homework.... which is concerning given what we see our private school peers working on each weekend after games.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:on the flipside, we still have zero homework.... which is concerning given what we see our private school peers working on each weekend after games.

No need to make this about private school. My child at Newport Mill MS, which is not a fancy school, has about 45 minutes a night in a variety of classes usually including math, foreign language, world studies, and English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We love the new enriched classes that came out of the cohort criteria. Our DD takes more rigorous classes without spending hours on the bus. Not to mention the many students who may have not been admitted or adequately challenged without this change. It seems like a huge win for MCPS.

Can you tell me which MS your kids attend?

My neighbor has not had the same experience so far in 6th Grade at a home school.

yes tell me too, since it most definitely is not our MS "enriched classes". what's your home MS you are raving about? We've had two disappointing years after HGC for 4th and 5th grade.

There are 2 new classes for some of this year's 6th graders. They follow the magnet MS curriculum. If you have a kid in them, that's great and eager to hear about their experiences. They're not the "enriched classes."