DEI and magnet schools

[Anonymous]

Just wondering how the end of DEI will impact criteria based magnet school admissions. Anyone know anything?

[Anonymous]

How could anyone possible know. And further, the biggest DEI done for the magnet programs was to make the review done centrally for some so as to create inclusion. I suspect if things have to go back what you will see is the magnets start to become disbanded altogether.

[Anonymous]

I don't see them ending the central review of all students altogether, but they could change the process by which they determine which students are offered admission.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just wondering how the end of DEI will impact criteria based magnet school admissions. Anyone know anything?

Admins deleted my thread asking about all this stuff.

[Anonymous]

I don't see anything changing. They could decide to go after MCPS for using FARMS rates as a proxy for race, but they would need to find evidence that this was the intention. The last time Potomac parents sued over local norms, MCPS pivoted to the lottery for CES and MS programs and the case was thrown out. To my knowledge, they have not changed the approach since that time, so I think it would be difficult to overturn the existing ruling.

[Anonymous]

Isn't the lottery for CES and MS just DEI?

[Anonymous]

The process has already been adjusted to fend off “DEI” complaints. As PP said, ES and MS are lottery from a larger pool of students. HS review is managed centrally and schools get de-identified data. Just MAP scores, GPA, and essay. Also essentially a lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Isn't the lottery for CES and MS just DEI?

No. Lotteries from a pool of qualified applicants are a generally accepted way of selecting participants for criteria based programs. Lots of districts use them, or do smaller lotteries by geographic areas. I would not hope for that if I were a parent from an affluent part of the county. You don't want a system that quotas spots by high school cluster, which is the alternative.

[Anonymous]

Imagine if they just made enough real magnet-level education available locally to everyone with a big enough local peer cohort and centrally to everyone without. Too bad that the old paradigm was so demagogued by ongoing anti-GT elements that that approach, when introduced, didn't come with either the organization or funding to support that local equivalent well enough, and was then the subject of threatened lawsuits such that it lasted a single year and we've ended up with the lottery, instead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Isn't the lottery for CES and MS just DEI?

No. Lotteries from a pool of qualified applicants are a generally accepted way of selecting participants for criteria based programs. Lots of districts use them, or do smaller lotteries by geographic areas. I would not hope for that if I were a parent from an affluent part of the county. You don't want a system that quotas spots by high school cluster, which is the alternative.

Right. The incredibly lowered criteria for making the pool in some schools is the DEI part, not the lottery.

[Anonymous]

When a kid who has 85% gets into a magnet at the expense of a kid who got a 99%, it is because of DEI.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When a kid who has 85% gets into a magnet at the expense of a kid who got a 99%, it is because of DEI.

That was an easier argument to make before the Potomac Parent Lawsuit pushed MCPS into a lottery system.

There is no law that says magnet admissions need to be "first past the post," just that race cannot be explicitly considered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When a kid who has 85% gets into a magnet at the expense of a kid who got a 99%, it is because of DEI.

There is an element of that that encouraged the lottery approach, but there is much more to the picture.

First, the largest underlying problem is the lack of adequate seating for the magnet programs when compared to the size of the student population that would benefit.

Second, the use of exposure-related metrics such as MAP encourages prepping, resulting in higher scores by those less highly able but exposed via tutoring than by the more highly able but not exposed, when the object is more about meeting the need/capacity of those more highly able than meeting the current learning level of those who have been pushed -- not that some of those might also be highly able.

Third, when a highly able kid with no family resources to facilitate outside exposure (or sometimes even be aware of that opportunity) and no local peer cohort to facilitate in-class enrichment/acceleration scores at the 85th percentile, but where that is locally normed to the 99th, considering relative achievement vs. similarly situated peers, but is denied in favor of a less highly able kid who got a 98th percentile (nobody at national 99th is left out of the lottery) due to family- and peer-cohort-enabled additional exposure, it is because of wealth.

[Anonymous]

MCPS should bring back the Cogat. I think a lot more highly able kids who were not recognized were being picked up by that test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS should bring back the Cogat. I think a lot more highly able kids who were not recognized were being picked up by that test.

That's happening, at least on an exploratory basis. They are using it as part of the GT identification paradigm in the early grades where it was administered this year.