Black students in PGCPS do better than Black students in MCPS in math

[Anonymous]

Valid points from the above two PPs- it truly does come down to the culture.

I believe people seriously need to question MCPS right now. They only care about numbers - and not who they trample on to get there.

Many many many children are left behind in this district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe this. The superintendent and county executive there have their priorities straight on education. The super seems to be doing actually doing what he said he will - focus on education, financial adherence, and transparency. Everything Taylor isn’t.

I would go further and say it's not just the super but the entire environment of MCPS and Montgomery County.

The super was picked by the BOE. And the BOE was picked by the constituents.

If you base things off of DCUM and what you see that MCPS is doing, they're not really focused on the right things.

If you look at it, MCPS really just cares about it's numbers and making sure it doesn't look bad. So if they have a disproportionate number of students struggling or identified, instead of trying to solve or fix the issue, they try to cover it up.

ie if a number of students are struggling in a class, instead of showing their actual grades, they lower the standards and makes it hard to fail a class. This comes out in things like AP class where you compare the students who are able to meet College Readiness benchmarks in the tests and those that are not. Also proficiency rates in the state assessments.

Then they don't want to discipline students because it would look bad for their numbers.

MCPS does it for the numbers. The residents of Montgomery County, or just members on DCUM, think that they're valuing diversity and equity. But the way MCPS is doing things is not helping all the populations in meeting academic standards and preparing them competitiveness for life after high school.

+1

MCPS's number one priority is covering up its misdeeds and failures, regardless of who it hurts in the long run: namely staff, parents and students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Valid points from the above two PPs- it truly does come down to the culture.

I believe people seriously need to question MCPS right now. They only care about numbers - and not who they trample on to get there.

Many many many children are left behind in this district.

I wouldn't mind the "caring about numbers" if the things they were focused on were things that can't easily be gamed, like proficiency on standardized tests. But caring about things like graduation rate, or suspension rate... it's easy to change those things just by loosening standards for graduation or acceptable behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Valid points from the above two PPs- it truly does come down to the culture.

I believe people seriously need to question MCPS right now. They only care about numbers - and not who they trample on to get there.

Many many many children are left behind in this district.

I wouldn't mind the "caring about numbers" if the things they were focused on were things that can't easily be gamed, like proficiency on standardized tests. But caring about things like graduation rate, or suspension rate... it's easy to change those things just by loosening standards for graduation or acceptable behavior.

Bingo. They manipulate things instead of actually solving the problem.

[Anonymous]

I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

Someone else mentioned this, but it's true for Black students overall in algebra. The trend doesn't extend to other MCAP tests, but for algebra it is true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

Someone else mentioned this, but it's true for Black students overall in algebra. The trend doesn't extend to other MCAP tests, but for algebra it is true.

it also extends to Algebra 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

Oh I get it. The parents in Greenbelt are the "good Black parents" and only Black kids with literal rocket scientists as parents can become proficient in math. For all the other Black kids, the problem is the parents, not the schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

Oh I get it. The parents in Greenbelt are the "good Black parents" and only Black kids with literal rocket scientists as parents can become proficient in math. For all the other Black kids, the problem is the parents, not the schools.

You are grabbing the stick from the wrong end. OP is using Black kids as a cudgel with which to beat MCPS, but Black kids are not tools to be whipped out when you have a preexisting grievance.

If PGCPS has something to teach MCPS about educating Black students in math, then let's hear it. But that's not what we are seeing -- we are seeing one of the highest SES middle schools in PGCPS outpace the population-level statistics in MCPS. That's just not a reasonable comparison.

[Anonymous]

FYI Greenbelt MS is 3/4 FARMS. That means most of these kids are not the kids of NASA scientists so let's drop that ridiculous excuse for MCPS's failures.

[Anonymous]

Does PGCPS have more students taking Algebra 1 in 9th grade, so that they wouldn't show up in a middle school's average score?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

Oh I get it. The parents in Greenbelt are the "good Black parents" and only Black kids with literal rocket scientists as parents can become proficient in math. For all the other Black kids, the problem is the parents, not the schools.

You are grabbing the stick from the wrong end. OP is using Black kids as a cudgel with which to beat MCPS, but Black kids are not tools to be whipped out when you have a preexisting grievance.

If PGCPS has something to teach MCPS about educating Black students in math, then let's hear it. But that's not what we are seeing -- we are seeing one of the highest SES middle schools in PGCPS outpace the population-level statistics in MCPS. That's just not a reasonable comparison.

1. Greenbelt MS is not "high SES" - 3/4 of students receive FARMS
2. The comparison is not between MCPS and Greenbelt Middle School. Multiple posters have highlighted MD school report card data on Algebra 1 tests for PGCPS and MCPS (whole districts, not individual schools) showing that not only do Black PGCPS students outperform Black MCPS students on this test, Black PGCPS students receiving FARMS outperform Black MCPS students not receiving FARMS.

You can go straight to h3ll with your implication that talking about Black student performance in MCPS is somehow "using Black kids as a cudgel". Go straighttt to h3ll.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to derail the usual MCPS bashing and complaining, but the fact is that OP's assertion does not seem to be true.

One school in PGCPS outperforms the MCPS average. That's good! I'm happy for Greenbelt MS. But that doesn't really tell us anything at the county-wide level, nor does it tell us anything about how to improve outcomes for Black kids in MCPS, unless the lesson is "have NASA employees as parents."

Oh I get it. The parents in Greenbelt are the "good Black parents" and only Black kids with literal rocket scientists as parents can become proficient in math. For all the other Black kids, the problem is the parents, not the schools.

You are grabbing the stick from the wrong end. OP is using Black kids as a cudgel with which to beat MCPS, but Black kids are not tools to be whipped out when you have a preexisting grievance.

If PGCPS has something to teach MCPS about educating Black students in math, then let's hear it. But that's not what we are seeing -- we are seeing one of the highest SES middle schools in PGCPS outpace the population-level statistics in MCPS. That's just not a reasonable comparison.

Well actually if you look at the post in this thread:
https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/45/1305522.page

The Black/African American students at Pyle had a lower Algebra I proficiency rate (50 percent) compared to the proficiency rate for FARMS students (71.4).

And this matched the numbers when I looked it up mdreportcard earlier today.

So it's not just a issue with SES.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does PGCPS have more students taking Algebra 1 in 9th grade, so that they wouldn't show up in a middle school's average score?

The article highlighted Greenbelt MS as a model of good practice.

However, districtwide data on Algebra 1 scores show Black PGCPS students outperformed Black MCPS students on the Algebra 1 MCAP regardless of which grade they took it in.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does PGCPS have more students taking Algebra 1 in 9th grade, so that they wouldn't show up in a middle school's average score?

They don't have it broken down by race, but it looks like in MCPS around 60% of the Algebra 1 test takers are middle schoolers, while in PGCPS about 50% of Algebra 1 test takers are high schoolers, 25% are middle schoolers, and the other 25% are at schools that don't have either "middle" or "high" in the name (charter schools, I'm guessing? but no idea what level.)

MCPS definitely has a lot more kids doing Algebra 1 in 7th, though, judging by the Geometry numbers-- there's like 3000 MCPS kids taking the Geometry MCAP in middle school and only 10 taking the Geometry MCAP in PGCPS schools with "middle" in the name.