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Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)
Any insight regarding Eastern Middle school Magnet Program ?
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Anonymous
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Our experience at EMS was that the same accelerated pathways were available there as at our homeschool. That pathway led to taking Calc in Jr. year.
The quality of math teaching in the accelerated pathway was the same at EMS and at home school. |
Anonymous
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Cabin John has an extremely talented cohort of students who lost the magnet lottery. The commute steals a lot of time from learning / ECs / free time.
Class discussion just isn't a big deal. We all went to school, and many of us went to college; we remember that discussion is not the important part. |
Anonymous
| The make up of the cohort has changed a lot since the lottery. You won't find the same group of high achieving peers especially in math that you will find at Cabin John. |
Anonymous
| Given the quality of Cabin John, your focus on math instruction and the length of the commute I would say no it is not worth it. A lot of the kids who drop out are from Potomac. |
Anonymous
| Our daughter attended eastern and was 2+ ahead in math. It is not exclusively magnet kids in those classes, but because many of those kids are extremely bright they tended to be together for math. Her math instruction was head and shoulders above our sons who was in a W feeder middle school in the grade behind our daughter. But there was absolutely no comparison between the quality of our daughters humanities classes and our sons AIM classes at his middle school. Eastern was just far superior, hands down, in part because the expectations are very high and the assignment complexity reflects that which forces the issue. |
Anonymous
| My inclination is “if in doubt, go for it”. You can always switch back to your home school but you can’t transition into the magnet if you don’t go from the beginning. |
Anonymous
This must have been a long time ago. There has been a lot of turnover since the pandemic and the instruction is awful. |
Anonymous
My kid had excellent math teachers, and was well prepared for Algebra 2 in 9th. EMS also allows some 6th graders to take Algebra 1, which isn’t the case at every MS. Not sure how that happens, but there were definitely a handful of 6th graders in my kid’s algebra class, because the teacher mentioned it at back to school night. Science, on the other hand, is abysmal. But that’s the curriculum, not necessarily the teachers, whom my EMS student liked well enough. My kid said even their science teachers expressed frustration at how bad MCPS’s MS science curriculum was. I can’t imagine it would be any better elsewhere. |
Anonymous
| Thank you all. It’s not about not wanting my DC to be mixing with the mainstream students. I just wanted to know the idea of overall school and the program. It’s the decision to be made in the last minute and it’s taking a toll on us. I know it’s an excellent program but given the commute and like the PP said time for extra curricular activities I’m just concerned and turning to opinions and suggestions from DCUM. Ofcourse ultimately we have to make the decision based on what would be right for us. Thanks every one . |
Anonymous
It’s a huge deal at Eastern. It’s like the difference between sitting in a 500 seat lecture and getting to discuss research in a 22 person senior seminar. |
Anonymous
| In other levels how serious is bullying related issues for kids in the school Eastern/ TPMS/ RC/MLK ? In |
Anonymous
| Boy or girl? |
Anonymous
Correct, you can. My kid got accepted at TPMS immediately and got off the waitlist for Eastern in May. TBH, everyone (and I mean everyone) that I know who had a kid in the Eastern pool has been offered a place at this point. |
Anonymous
Boy . |
Anonymous
| I don't want to overstate but it's not the gentlest school. Some parents raised concerns this spring about fighting/physical altercations. |