Is Cold Spring HGC the only HGC targeted by MCPS for denying entrance to MS magnet programs?

[Anonymous]

As a Barnsley parent, I can say that the kids are NOT talking about it openly as a cohort. There has been no recess poll of students. So, no one knows for sure what happened there.

[Anonymous]

Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

[Anonymous]

Perhaps they're taking into account whether a cohort for these students already exists at the home middle school, and schools like Frost, CJ and Hoover have those strong cohorts already? I know that this is now of the factors being used at for the 4th grade CES selection process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be interesting to hear from other clusters aside from Cold Spring as to what their admissions results are? Having said that, I think Cold Spring was hit the hardest -- i.e. to go from ~25 kids being accepted in years past to 2 is drastic no matter how you dice it.

Next year parents should prepare their kids more for the application process and testing. The magnet program will only get more competitive as more people find out about it. At least 2 students were prepared from CS.

For gods sake what a sour grape! So those 99s crossboard Cold Spring kids got rejected because their scores are not high enough? !

Hundreds of "crossboard" 99s and only 200 spots. 2 students from CS were prepared to get two of those spots. These programs are competitive, if you are not preparing your kids as other parents are preparing theirs, your odds of getting in decrease significantly. Or move to another school that makes a kids 99 stand out differently from a school that has 20 students that also all scored 99s.

There is no evidence that there were hundreds of kids who got all 99s. There are a few reports of students like that who were rejected, and those parents are understandably upset. Very few people on the major thread posted scores. Even the Cold Spring poster didn’t specify what those 50 kids had. And if they all got 4 99s, that still doesn’t mean hundreds. The median of accepted students that someone posted was 97/99/97/99. That means only 50 percent of accepted students had above a 97 just on the quantitative. There are a few reports of accepted students with 99s across the board, but that is a small number as well, maybe 5-10.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be interesting to hear from other clusters aside from Cold Spring as to what their admissions results are? Having said that, I think Cold Spring was hit the hardest -- i.e. to go from ~25 kids being accepted in years past to 2 is drastic no matter how you dice it.

Next year parents should prepare their kids more for the application process and testing. The magnet program will only get more competitive as more people find out about it. At least 2 students were prepared from CS.

You've missed the point of the changes. the change was trying to take the prep out of the process as CS parents (generalization of course) have historically prepped their kids the most. There also is no application process to prep for now -- no essays, no activities, no awards, no teacher recs. So, the whole thing seems counter productive to its intentions of dealing with the idea that testing was biased towards certain groups (white/Asian) because now all that is left is the test! What can they do? I guess use region to try to even things up? Seems a shame to ditch all that other data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be interesting to hear from other clusters aside from Cold Spring as to what their admissions results are? Having said that, I think Cold Spring was hit the hardest -- i.e. to go from ~25 kids being accepted in years past to 2 is drastic no matter how you dice it.

Next year parents should prepare their kids more for the application process and testing. The magnet program will only get more competitive as more people find out about it. At least 2 students were prepared from CS.

You've missed the point of the changes. the change was trying to take the prep out of the process as CS parents (generalization of course) have historically prepped their kids the most. There also is no application process to prep for now -- no essays, no activities, no awards, no teacher recs. So, the whole thing seems counter productive to its intentions of dealing with the idea that testing was biased towards certain groups (white/Asian) because now all that is left is the test! What can they do? I guess use region to try to even things up? Seems a shame to ditch all that other data.

Are you a Cold Spring insider to know this? Did you take a poll of the kids? Seriously, I am a Cold Spring parent and these kinds of generalization disappoints me. Yes, we have heard of a few kids prepping but for the most part this does not ring true, unless prepping means you read with your kids daily.

[Anonymous]

Weren't the current 5th graders selected under the old process? In other words, weren't they to some extent self-selected? I think this year's results are mostly an effect that universal screening revealed a much larger contingent of kids needing GT services that hadn't applied to the HGCs. Combine that with the additional question about whether or not there is a cohort at the home school, and all this says is that Hoover, Cabin John, and Frost middle schools have a lot of GT kids there and the home schools should be programming for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know what the median was for eastern? I haven't heard of anyone from our center admitted there. This is very surprising, in light of the writing projects they have had during the last two years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:[
There is no evidence that there were hundreds of kids who got all 99s. There are a few reports of students like that who were rejected, and those parents are understandably upset. Very few people on the major thread posted scores. Even the Cold Spring poster didn’t specify what those 50 kids had. And if they all got 4 99s, that still doesn’t mean hundreds. The median of accepted students that someone posted was 97/99/97/99. That means only 50 percent of accepted students had above a 97 just on the quantitative. There are a few reports of accepted students with 99s across the board, but that is a small number as well, maybe 5-10.

A few students with all 99s getting rejected? I have to ask, are they Asian?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

But the point is there are no more applications. There's screening, testing and evaluating.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps they're taking into account whether a cohort for these students already exists at the home middle school, and schools like Frost, CJ and Hoover have those strong cohorts already? I know that this is now of the factors being used at for the 4th grade CES selection process.

This makes no sense to me as a 2X CES parent. One of the factors in accepting my kids to CES was the lack of an adequate cohort at our home elementary (which is a W school feeder and generally well regarded). Plus, no matter the "cohort," except for math there's very little accelerated instruction opportunity at the home middle school (which my oldest kid attended, so I know all about the joke that "honors" classes are).

If our kids needed CES for lack of an adequate cohort, then *don't* need magnet middle school because that same group of kids now is an adequate cohort, then something is weird.

And generally I believe that the middle school magnet curricula should be made much more widely available at home middle schools. The problem is that so many high-achieving kids are just marking time in middle school. What a waste of three years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Perhaps they're taking into account whether a cohort for these students already exists at the home middle school, and schools like Frost, CJ and Hoover have those strong cohorts already? I know that this is now of the factors being used at for the 4th grade CES selection process.

This makes no sense to me as a 2X CES parent. One of the factors in accepting my kids to CES was the lack of an adequate cohort at our home elementary (which is a W school feeder and generally well regarded). Plus, no matter the "cohort," except for math there's very little accelerated instruction opportunity at the home middle school (which my oldest kid attended, so I know all about the joke that "honors" classes are).

If our kids needed CES for lack of an adequate cohort, then *don't* need magnet middle school because that same group of kids now is an adequate cohort, then something is weird.

And generally I believe that the middle school magnet curricula should be made much more widely available at home middle schools. The problem is that so many high-achieving kids are just marking time in middle school. [b]What a waste of three years[/b].

Couldn't agree with you more. So those three years are -- again -- on the parents to supplement (CTY, Mathnasium, The Art of Problem Solving, etc).

[Anonymous]

Cold Spring is too white. MCPS is trying to make all programs diverse now and are letting kids in that otherwise wouldn’t qualify but have the skin color or culture they need.