HGC crowd is downright frightening!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a veteran MCPS teacher, I can assure you that the writing process has been given the short end of the stick since C2.0. My colleagues and I do our best to emphasize the importance of clear, well-organized writing, with proper spelling and grammar. But the writing process--from deciding on a topic through a final draft--is very time-consuming, if done right, and time is the one thing we do not have in our poorly written, jam-packed curriculum.

I agree wholeheartedly with the poster who proposed that MCPS stop writing curriculum and instead use something off-athe-shelf, but proven. Writing curriculum is an art. It can be done well, but the people who wrote C2.0 failed miserably. Want proof? Just ask yourself how many school systems have bought C2.0. As far as I know, the answer is near, or at, zero.

http://does.pasco.k12.fl.us/?page_id=365
At least one system is using it. It's now called Pearson Forward.



I have no experience with elementary. However, I have one kid in ES who writes every single day (grade 1) and another who's in 6th grade reading at an 11th grade level according to MAPr. My 9th graders' levels were much lower when we tested them in the fall. Sadly, even many of my honors' students fell below the typical average.

With math, my son asked about negative numbers and could write and solve equations with negatives. My daughter is doing algebraic equations. Math, however, is not my area! But I am impressed by what I see.

I know that writing is developmental. The goal is for all students to eventually develop their own voice - and that's only possible after they master the concepts of author's style. Many don't have that abstract knowledge in high school, but my career experiences ARE limited to very challenging schools with high FARMs, high truancy rates, and a very large ESOL population. So my perspective is skewed. My children's schools, however, don't face the same obstacles. So they are indeed learning from 2.0 materials.

The idea is to develop critical thinking skills in students. At one point, the system was driven by AP courses, which are highly technical. Now, with the growth of IB, the level of thinking becomes both global and technical and thus, helps students develop an appreciation for different perspectives.

So there is more than one way to analyze a text. There is more than one way to solve a math problem. There is more than one way to write an argument paper.

However, those skills take time to development, and with PARCC driving the system, teachers are constantly working within a crunched timeline. Some kids will always do well b/c they're fast learners with supportive parents. Others, however, will fall behind.

I feel for my ES colleagues b/c those are the formative years. And when we - as a system - fail to appreciate that abstract thinking kicks in at different times, we tend to play catch up quite a bit, thus becoming reactive instead of proactive.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Or we let out all our angst here, so we can be supportive to our kids.

no - Most of you are THAT crazy.

Chill, folks! Some kids move into MS/HS magnets after HGC; others don't.

How will you handle the rejection if they don't test in?

And we're "shocked" by the rise in anxiety:

old stats, which are still surprising - http://www.adaa.org/finding-help/helping-others/college-students/facts

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health problems on college campuses. Forty million U.S. adults suffer from an anxiety disorder, and 75 percent of them experience their first episode of anxiety by age 22.

In addition, a 2008 Associated Press and mtvU survey of college students found the following:

80 percent say they frequently or sometimes experience daily stress
34 percent have felt depressed at some point in the past three months
13 percent have been diagnosed with a mental health condition such as an anxiety disorder or depression
9 percent have seriously considered suicide in the past year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

How old is your kid?

The fifth grade teachers at our school went into panic mode when 3/4 of the entire 5th grade couldn't write a basic paragraph. They reached out to other 5th grade teachers at other schools across the county and to make a long story short, mcps discovered that yet another shortcoming of 2.0 is that they failed to adequately teach writing. So they dropped everything and went back to the old way of teaching (much younger kids) how to write a paragraph---then worked their way up to three paragraphs.

This happened last year to the 2.0 guinea pigs.

So you probably should rely on the mechanics to come later. They didn't for 5th graders last year, and it caused a literal frenzy.

Fwiw, this wasn't a Title I or Focus school. These were upper class mostly white kids...and they couldn't write a basic paragraph in 5th grade.

That's probably why parents freak out about HGCs. I get it now.

That's odd, given that my kid has been writing multi-paragraph pieces of writing at school since second grade, in a school that does not have upper-class, mostly-white kids. I wonder why the upper-class, mostly-white kids were incapable of it?

Because they are not Asian. We really need to close the horrible white vs. Asian achievement gap in MCPS. Those white kids' self-esteem might be hurt, though, so let's be sure to sugar coat the reasons for their failure to keep up. Please don't suggest that it might be that the Asian kids just work harder! Snowflake Griffin and his sister Michele (Yes, just one l...and you had better spell that "right" you loser) need time to practice for the big lacrosse game!

That's odd. My school is predominantly white. My first grader and her classmates are writing paragraphs. No problem. Maybe this is an issue with a particular school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^^What are you talking about?

It's just Asian Racist. She frequents this board a lot.

[Anonymous]

So ONE school system bought C2.0. Are they still using it. I had heard they abandoned it because it was just so very bad. This curriculum was supposed to be a money maker for MCPS. That's how then-superintendent and his Pearson pals sold it to the board and the parents/taxpayers. What a crock that turned out to be. Teachers all over the county are still making their own assessments, work sheet, rubrics, class assignments, homework assignments because there are so many holes in what IS provided under 2.0...not to mention the many links that never worked or no longer work. Parents should be up in arms. The teachers are, but nobody in the central office really listens or cares about what the teachers say.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So ONE school system bought C2.0. Are they still using it. I had heard they abandoned it because it was just so very bad. This curriculum was supposed to be a money maker for MCPS. That's how then-superintendent and his Pearson pals sold it to the board and the parents/taxpayers. What a crock that turned out to be. Teachers all over the county are still making their own assessments, work sheet, rubrics, class assignments, homework assignments because there are so many holes in what IS provided under 2.0...not to mention the many links that never worked or no longer work. Parents should be up in arms. The teachers are, but nobody in the central office really listens or cares about what the teachers say.

How do you know what teachers all over the county are doing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So ONE school system bought C2.0. Are they still using it. I had heard they abandoned it because it was just so very bad. This curriculum was supposed to be a money maker for MCPS. That's how then-superintendent and his Pearson pals sold it to the board and the parents/taxpayers. What a crock that turned out to be. Teachers all over the county are still making their own assessments, work sheet, rubrics, class assignments, homework assignments because there are so many holes in what IS provided under 2.0...not to mention the many links that never worked or no longer work. Parents should be up in arms. The teachers are, but nobody in the central office really listens or cares about what the teachers say.

How do you know what teachers all over the county are doing?

NP but also a teacher. We know what our colleagues throughout the county are up to. The teacher network is pretty large. Plus we follow the curriculum rollout folders on outlook and mymcps where people are kind enough to share the resources they create so that not everybody has to recreate the wheel. MCPS actually encourages this practice. We create the materials, but once you upload them to any mcps run sites then they have ownership of them. So basically they've created a way for teachers to do their work for them in the name of "collaboration".

[Anonymous]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually wouldn't want my kid to attend an HGC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually wouldn't want my kid to attend an HGC.

because?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually wouldn't want my kid to attend an HGC.

Good news! Your kid doesn't have to!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually wouldn't want my kid to attend an HGC.

Good news! Your kid doesn't have to!

Exactly. Your child doesn't even have to take the test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I'm the only one, but I actually wouldn't want my kid to attend an HGC.

You're not the only one. But I have to admit that's in part because our home school has a large population of very bright/gifted kids. So it's not like she lacks a peer group here anyway.

[Anonymous]

HGCs aren't a guarantee of future magnet success partly just because of numbers: there aren't nearly enough MS magnets to take all the HGC alumns each year.

As the parent of kids who have been through multiple magnets, I can assure you that they're not heaven on earth. Some classes and teachers are great; others, not so much. Sure, my kid loved doing Rubics cubes at TPMS, but not every day was like that.

ITA about how gifted kids are so curious that they challenge themselves. After school, if necessary. You, the parent, need to take them to the library and find stimulating summer camps and online opportunities (and not just in STEM, but all over the map), at least until they can negotiate this stuff for themselves. I have two of those 130+ kids, and they did things like teach themselves programming from college professors' YouTube classes. That's what bright kids do. This parental hand-wringing encourages passivity in smart kids, besides being sad and entitled.

And gawd, is Asian Racist still here? I've been off this forum for a while. I was hoping Asian Racist (she lives in Potomac) and the racist who is obsessed with the Blair principal's Twitter feed (she lives in Poolesville) had left. Wrong on both counts I guess.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I couldn't follow all the digressions in this thread. But speaking about why people are more obsessed with HGC, has anyone mentioned that the current state of MCPS with their 2.0 curriculum could possibly be the culprit? I don't ever remember this being such an issue when my son was in MCPS elementary school...he is in 9th grade now (private school). Perhaps parents are so dissatisfied with the current state of affairs and more are hoping to get into the HGC program...hence all the discussion.

Exactly! Normally I wouldn't have bothered with HGC, but I can't stand this P system. It's teaching my child to do the minimum and get lazy. No incentive to work harder - the teachers don't give enough "ES Opportunities" for a child to actually get an ES on the report card. Kids who easily get Ps are ignored. MCPS is teaching to the bottom. 80% of the teacher's time goes to the bottom few. Luckily, DC got into HGC for next year. I am interested to see how it feels for DC to be in a classroom of peers for the first time...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Exactly! Normally I wouldn't have bothered with HGC, but I can't stand this P system. It's teaching my child to do the minimum and get lazy. No incentive to work harder - the teachers don't give enough "ES Opportunities" for a child to actually get an ES on the report card. Kids who easily get Ps are ignored. MCPS is teaching to the bottom. 80% of the teacher's time goes to the bottom few. Luckily, DC got into HGC for next year. I am interested to see how it feels for DC to be in a classroom of peers for the first time...

You expect your child to learn to do their best from grades on a report card?

In my elementary school, there were no grades for K-6. I wonder how we managed?