Grade 4 HGC Magnet Acceptance Test Score

[Anonymous]

I am trying to understand the objectivity of the section process by understanding the acceptance test scores. If you are accepted or wait listed, will you be able to provide your HGC school name and scores in Verbal, Quantitative and Non-Verbal testing please?

[Anonymous]

I don't remember the breakdown but DC was accepted and only lost 2 points over the three different tests. I hae heard the scores are important but not the only criteria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't remember the breakdown but DC was accepted and only lost 2 points over the three different tests. I hae heard the scores are important but not the only criteria.

I guess it should be that way. However heard from a friend, whose son was not accepted, that the central office hammered him with the mean scores. He wants to understand the data distrinution to make an appeal. If their are outliers, mean is not the best measure of central tendency. So, am helping him with this information. Will help if more people come forward though.

[Anonymous]

The mean is nothing without the range..it would also be nice if they told you WHAT TEST IT WAS!!!

[Anonymous]

You're not going to be able to get useful data by asking for a few random posts on an anonymous board.

[Anonymous]

I wish they would give more information about what was on the tests and the distribution of scores (not the means). I suppose they don't want flack for their decisions, but I feel like I am a taxpayer and that this information is useful in managing my child's education. My big problem with MCPS is the lack of transparency. They make parents feel like we are obstacles to their job. Good kids probably do get rejected, so the proper MCPS response should should be this is our general philosophy as approved by the elected BOE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I wish they would give more information about what was on the tests and the distribution of scores (not the means). I suppose they don't want flack for their decisions, but I feel like I am a taxpayer and that this information is useful in managing my child's education. My big problem with MCPS is the lack of transparency. They make parents feel like we are obstacles to their job. Good kids probably do get rejected, so the proper MCPS response should should be this is our general philosophy as approved by the elected BOE.

Under Wrights Law you are entitled to any and all testing results for your child. You may have to fight for it but if you learn about your rights and how to navigate the system you'll get them.

[Anonymous]

Another issue to be aware of is that some of the tests are created specially for MoCo by the Pearson group of companies (I know this is true for the MS magnets but I don't know about the HGCs because DCs didn't apply). This because tests for the population as a whole effectively have a cap at the upper bound (lots of kids score in the 99th pctile) and MoCo wants to spread out this upper tail by means of a special test. There will still be a distribution and a mean to the results, but it's for the self-selected group of kids who took this specially-created test. Therefore, you won't be able to take your kid's score and go online to compare results with tests of the whole population, as you could with the WISC or SATs.

I seem to recall that the mean of accepted kids was printed at the bottom of the letters we got, but maybe that was for acceptance letters.

As another poster said, schools also look at teacher and parent recs for the HGCs, and also at grades. The magnets require a lot of work and they want kids who seem willing to do the work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another issue to be aware of is that some of the tests are created specially for MoCo by the Pearson group of companies (I know this is true for the MS magnets but I don't know about the HGCs because DCs didn't apply). This because tests for the population as a whole effectively have a cap at the upper bound (lots of kids score in the 99th pctile) and MoCo wants to spread out this upper tail by means of a special test. There will still be a distribution and a mean to the results, but it's for the self-selected group of kids who took this specially-created test. Therefore, you won't be able to take your kid's score and go online to compare results with tests of the whole population, as you could with the WISC or SATs.

I seem to recall that the mean of accepted kids was printed at the bottom of the letters we got, but maybe that was for acceptance letters.

As another poster said, schools also look at teacher and parent recs for the HGCs, and also at grades. The magnets require a lot of work and they want kids who seem willing to do the work.

Oh, this kid's denial letter had the mean scores. He seems to be off for one score and really good on the other two. He has excellent school report for both 2nd and 3rd grade and is one of the who really need a HGC to succeed. His RIT is at 6th grade level for MCPS. Problem is without the distribution you cannot trust the mean score. The dad is trying to justify in the appeal from score perspective too.

[Anonymous]

Maybe try to get the teacher rec?

[Anonymous]

I think the mean (maybe the median?) score they send out is for the group of accepted kids, which is obviously a subset of all the kids who took the test. I'm guessing here, but maybe 1 kid in five who applies is accepted? So you're looking at the distribution around an even more arcane number.

If you're worried about a distribution with with a long upper tail, then you want the median? So you want the median of the smaller group of accepted kids. The median of all the kids who took the test isn't really helpful, given that 4/5 of kids were waitlisted or rejected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the mean (maybe the median?) score they send out is for the group of accepted kids, which is obviously a subset of all the kids who took the test. I'm guessing here, but maybe 1 kid in five who applies is accepted? So you're looking at the distribution around an even more arcane number.

If you're worried about a distribution with with a long upper tail, then you want the median? So you want the median of the smaller group of accepted kids. The median of all the kids who took the test isn't really helpful, given that 4/5 of kids were waitlisted or rejected.

Oh, I should have been more specific. Yes, the idea is to get the median score of the accepted kids only. The other way to find whether mean is a correct central tendency by understanding the distribution of the accepted score. If it is a normal distribution, mean is fine. Otherwise a few outliers score in a group of about 50 kids accepted can skew the mean significantly!

[Anonymous]

Why not present several points along the distribution, 25th, 50th (median), 75th, 95th percentiles?

Why not a little explanation of each test's philosophy and approach?

How hard can that be?

[Anonymous]

I would also be interesting to know the success rate of appeals... How may successes could there be without making the classes too large?

[Anonymous]

Also would be interesting to know how many kids on the wait list are offered places before the new school year