Question about middle school English differentiation

[Anonymous]

I think of it as the Lake Wobegon Effect, “all the children are above average”. I think they use the same yardstick to determine that MCPS is “one of the the best school systems in the country, after all most of their kids are in advanced classes. It also avoids inconvenient demographic analyses.

MCPS does have some great opportunities (immersion, magnets, etc.), but their standard curriculum when my kids (1 in college, 1 just graduated college) were going through stank. I think before COVID, they were starting to change to a new curriculum because an audit revealed the failures of the old one. I don’t know the strength of the new curriculum, or if it’s been fully implemented, but that’s the first step.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not a big fan of Study Synch. I was going over the responses to one of the multiple choice quizzes on Study Synch and there was one question where the question (to define a word as used in context) really had two possible answers; there was another question where the "correct" answer seemed to me totally the wrong interpretation of the passage, and there was another answer that was also not great, but maybe closer to the point the author was actually trying to make.

So I think even an advanced reader can do poorly in Advanced English, because at least the multiple choice questions seem to be an exercise in trying to figure out what the StudySynch people would think, rather than what the author thought.

For Band, I thought it was just that 6th grade is beginner band and 7th grade is advanced band -- not that it implied any better skill level. They could call it Band 1, Band 2, Band 3, which might be more accurate.

There's really a wide variation in the grading. My older kid, who is a conscientious student who studies Spanish in her spare time and is close to fluent now, got a B in MS Spanish for random reasons. Her sibling is getting an A and he knows about 5 words, three of which are foods he orders at Mexican restaurants. My husband keeps saying "How is he getting an A?" and I'm like "How did our first kid get a B???"

That's funny, re: Spanish. My kid doesn't seem to be learning much Spanish at all. In our middle school, 6th grade band is also called Advanced Band.

Well, I wouldn't expect much since there hasn't even been a full week of school yet.

He took Spanish A all last year—there’s when he got the A’s.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused. Not yet in middle school yet but why not just call it English instead of Advanced English?

Because both classes still exist in the MCPS middle school course bulletin. Grade 6 English is ENG 1009, and Grade 6 Advanced English is ENG 1010. But not every class in the course bulletin is offered at every middle school. If your middle school has decided to offer ENG 1010 only (which is what most middle schools have done), then the name of everyone's class is Grade 6 Advanced English. I guess it saves the principal and the counselors from hearing from parents demanding that their kids be placed in the advanced class.

[Anonymous]

Op here, thank you for the responses. I assumed they would still group the kids according to ability, but I guess not. This doesn’t seem to be good for anyone but the middle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op here, thank you for the responses. I assumed they would still group the kids according to ability, but I guess not. This doesn’t seem to be good for anyone but the middle.

It is not good for the middle, either, because they get stuck with a lot of kids who aren’t paying attention. (Either because it is too easy boring, or because they don’t care)

[Anonymous]

30+ kids in the class (amd the teacher has 5 classes, so 150+ students), no meaningful feedback, no papers of any length/or with research (because what teacher can grade 150+ of those) and MCPS is full of it when they claim there is differentiation in the classroom. There is none.

It gets better in HS, when there is on-grade, honors, and various other special programs like IB and AP courses

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op here, thank you for the responses. I assumed they would still group the kids according to ability, but I guess not. This doesn’t seem to be good for anyone but the middle.

It is not good for the middle, either, because they get stuck with a lot of kids who aren’t paying attention. (Either because it is too easy boring, or because they don’t care)

Yeah, I was thinking this also. It’s not good for any student.

But MCPS dislikes differentiation in ES and MS because it doesn’t help close the Achievement Gap and it racially discriminatory. So, basically, now kids of ALL races are left to suffer because nobody gets any quality writing instruction in MS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:30+ kids in the class (amd the teacher has 5 classes, so 150+ students), no meaningful feedback, no papers of any length/or with research (because what teacher can grade 150+ of those) and MCPS is full of it when they claim there is differentiation in the classroom. There is none.

It gets better in HS, when there is on-grade, honors, and various other special programs like IB and AP courses

+1. 9th Grader already likes HS so much better!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused. Not yet in middle school yet but why not just call it English instead of Advanced English?

Equity. MCPS is focused on equity.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:30+ kids in the class (amd the teacher has 5 classes, so 150+ students), no meaningful feedback, no papers of any length/or with research (because what teacher can grade 150+ of those) and MCPS is full of it when they claim there is differentiation in the classroom. There is none.

It gets better in HS, when there is on-grade, honors, and various other special programs like IB and AP courses

I’m glad to hear this!

I have an 8th grader and have been hugely disappointed by MS English. My kid gets more writing instruction in her HIGH class than in English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused. Not yet in middle school yet but why not just call it English instead of Advanced English?

The same reason women's clothing manufacturers have inflated their sizing so that today's 8 is the same as a 12 or 14 from our moms' day: it makes people feel better about themselves. Or, in this case, their parents.

Nah. I don’t think it’s the parents.

We had some parents in 6th grade actually ask for a different class because they didn’t like the idea of ‘Advanced’ English for their kid who needed some extra help. School said no, all kids need to be in Advanced English.

[Anonymous]

Op here—I don’t understand why they have reading groups in elementary school and advanced classes in HS—why not middle? Such a weird aspect of McPs. And yes disappointing.

[Anonymous]

I agree the biggest problem is the lack of any real writing assignments or feedback. We had that in middle school and I went to public school in a crap district with classes that were just as big. I think there was less busy work for the teachers to grade, though. There seems to be a ton of little crap assignments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m confused. Not yet in middle school yet but why not just call it English instead of Advanced English?

The same reason women's clothing manufacturers have inflated their sizing so that today's 8 is the same as a 12 or 14 from our moms' day: it makes people feel better about themselves. Or, in this case, their parents.

Nah. I don’t think it’s the parents.

We had some parents in 6th grade actually ask for a different class because they didn’t like the idea of ‘Advanced’ English for their kid who needed some extra help. School said no, all kids need to be in Advanced English.

WOW.

[Anonymous]

Peer review seems to be most of the feedback.