This is painful
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Anonymous
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From an MCPS "school improvement plan":
Mathematics Goal Hispanic students, with a particular focus on students receiving Free And Reduced Meals (FARMs) will increase their proficiency in the MAP strand: operations and algebraic thinking, by 43% from 24% of students meeting proficiency to 67%. |
Anonymous
| Wow the irony... |
Anonymous
| Does anyone know what is MAP meeting benchmark mean? Our school sent a letter tot the community saying 49% 5th grader MAP-P meeting benchmark, what does that mean? 51% kids failed? |
Anonymous
| Good thing they’re teaching math and not English eh? |
Anonymous
Yes, indeed. What grade level math covers percentages? |
Anonymous
Can you please share the link of the improvement plan? Thanks! |
Anonymous
| Is this a one year goal because it's ridiculous if it is? |
Anonymous
I am not going to out the school. I think the principal generally does a good job, despite needing to brush up on basic math skills. -OP |
Anonymous
| Wow. Sad. |
Anonymous
| I’ve read this a few times and I’m not clear as to what is so wrong with it. The math makes sense. Is it because they didn’t define proficiency? If so, I’d assume that MCPS has a score for proficiency. Obviously it’s a big goal, but if most of those kids are close to the needed proficiency mark and they’re only working on one strand, it seems possible. What am I missing? |
Anonymous
Algebraic thinking, for a start. The passage is shittily written aside from the math error. (You can call it a typo but math is either correct or incorrect. ) |
Anonymous
Maybe because it says 43% when they mean 43 percentage points. |
Anonymous
The increase is percentage points, not a percent increase. It’s confusing and a common error, but it’s still pretty bad for a school to publish it. It’s actually more than a 100% increase, because the goal is to more than double the proficient students. But really just a word is missing here and we all know what it means. Here’s a helpful explainer. https://journalistsresource.org/home/percent-change-math-for-journalists/ |
Anonymous
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So we are all super concerned that the school missed one word? Even though everyone reading it can fully understand what is being stated? Got it.
And we wonder why people don’t want to go into teaching. TBH, what annoys me is that the school will invest extra time and resources into only Hispanic students to meet this goal rather than just trying to help everyone. To me, that’s the problem. My friend who is a teacher calls this out all the time- she says that she is told to only worry about her “black and brown babies.” She says that even though her class is 75% white and that some of those white kids struggle just as much as the POC kids, they are truly not worried about. That was eye opening to me and is way more concerning than a school leaving out a word in their goal. |
Anonymous
Agreed. I’m usually one to jump on mathematical mistakes and imprecision, but only when it’s used to make bad arguments or conclusions. It’s clear what was meant here. And agreeed re: focus on race -‘s ethnicity. My take on it (as UMC brown person who was an UMC brown baby born with every single academic advantage) is that there’s so much shame in admitting that a child’s socio-economic background is one of the biggest predictors of success it’s easier to focus on race. Because heaven forbid we admit we have a class structure in the US. And yes, race still plays a major factor in that. And of course, if there were enough resources for everyone, it wouldn’t be a zero sum game and all kids could get more than enough support through the school system. |