Is there a good way to escape the "garbage in, garbage out" mentality in MCPS schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. It has to do with socio-economics and placement of magnets.

I have college kids and high schoolers, who all attended or still attend multiple MCPS schools, because they all attended different schools due to special programs. We know a lot of people who have relayed their experiences with various other MCPS schools (and privates too).

Your premise is incorrect. Quality is not related to size. The advantages come from an intelligent, caring and competent Principal and the staff they hire (competency trickles down from the top), as well as the socio-economic make-up of the attending families.

Great employees are more likely to want to work in pleasant districts where students are less likely to have issues (wealthy districts and/or magnets); OR in really low-income districts at the *elementary* level, where there is a guarantee of extra funds to bolster social and academic weaknesses (but that advantage disappears at the low-income *secondary* levels, where kid problems turn into teen problems, that no school environment can fix).

You see where I'm going with this?

Educated and wealthy parents tend to pay more attention to their kids and care for their education. They are ready to plunk down any amount of money for early childhood enrichment, and then later, tutoring and test prep. Schools in those areas have a much less heavy lift for the average kid. (It also means they can devote more of their resources to special needs students - which explains why SN services and accommodations tend to be slightly better in the wealthy districts. Educated parents also know how to demand, insist and work the system better by paying astronomical prices for private neuropyschological evaluations to present as evidence of need: I know, I've had to do that.) The cohort of kids in a wealthy or magnet school district will be on average more studious and focused on their studies because they are raised in an environment where school matters a lot.

Caveat: magnets are purposefully housed in middle class or struggling neighborhoods (or which struggled at some point in time), in an attempt to elevate the cohort and insert a little equity into the system. This means there can be a wide difference in achievement between the magnet kids and the rest of the school, but you can't see that on the data sheet provided by MCPS - it's all averaged together per school. That's their goal - to hide the fish with sauce. The difference is sharper if the neighborhood is struggling, and less so if the neighborhood is stable. This might explain the difference between Blair and Poolesville.

Whether the building is large or small, and whether there are 1500 or 3000 high schoolers, or 300 or 600 elementary schoolers, in the end, does not matter at all.

Inverse correlation between size and rank -.71 in the top twenty largest schools.

A (School) B (Enrollment) C (Report Card Rank) -0.711569523
Montgomery Blair HS 3204 11
High Point HS 3003 33
Walter Johnson HS 2942 22
Wheaton HS 2599 55
Charles Herbert Flowers HS 2569 44
Parkdale HS 2561 66
Eleanor Roosevelt HS 2526 77
Duval HS 2503 1111
Northwest HS 2484 1614
Bowie HS 2460 88
North County HS 2451 99
Old Mill HS 2445 1010
Gaithersburg HS 2436 1212
Richard Montgomery HS 2390 1614
Bethesda-Chevy Chase HS 2335 1919
Northwestern HS (PGC) 2346 1818
Meade HS 2330 2020
Glen Burnie HS 2324 1614
Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. HS 2257 2121
Clarksburg HS 2251 2222

[Anonymous]

Our smart just go without the classes they need and want. And, it’s assumed many of us are poor when we aren’t.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:No. It has to do with socio-economics and placement of magnets.

I have college kids and high schoolers, who all attended or still attend multiple MCPS schools, because they all attended different schools due to special programs. We know a lot of people who have relayed their experiences with various other MCPS schools (and privates too).

Your premise is incorrect. Quality is not related to size. The advantages come from an intelligent, caring and competent Principal and the staff they hire (competency trickles down from the top), as well as the socio-economic make-up of the attending families.

Great employees are more likely to want to work in pleasant districts where students are less likely to have issues (wealthy districts and/or magnets); OR in really low-income districts at the *elementary* level, where there is a guarantee of extra funds to bolster social and academic weaknesses (but that advantage disappears at the low-income *secondary* levels, where kid problems turn into teen problems, that no school environment can fix).

You see where I'm going with this?

Educated and wealthy parents tend to pay more attention to their kids and care for their education. They are ready to plunk down any amount of money for early childhood enrichment, and then later, tutoring and test prep. Schools in those areas have a much less heavy lift for the average kid. (It also means they can devote more of their resources to special needs students - which explains why SN services and accommodations tend to be slightly better in the wealthy districts. Educated parents also know how to demand, insist and work the system better by paying astronomical prices for private neuropyschological evaluations to present as evidence of need: I know, I've had to do that.) The cohort of kids in a wealthy or magnet school district will be on average more studious and focused on their studies because they are raised in an environment where school matters a lot.

Caveat: magnets are purposefully housed in middle class or struggling neighborhoods (or which struggled at some point in time), in an attempt to elevate the cohort and insert a little equity into the system. This means there can be a wide difference in achievement between the magnet kids and the rest of the school, but you can't see that on the data sheet provided by MCPS - it's all averaged together per school. That's their goal - to hide the fish with sauce. The difference is sharper if the neighborhood is struggling, and less so if the neighborhood is stable. This might explain the difference between Blair and Poolesville.

Whether the building is large or small, and whether there are 1500 or 3000 high schoolers, or 300 or 600 elementary schoolers, in the end, does not matter at all.

Many of us do all that in less wealthy areas, sometimes more as we spend less on housing to give our kids opportunities and save for college. Why would you assume we don’t?