Magnet MS results - Takoma Park & Eastern - anyone heard today?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do not have a kid tested this year. DD admitted to TMPS 3 yrs ago ~90% on test scores.
As far as I can tell, MCPS Magnet/HGC quality degraded year by year.
Probably with 3+ years water-down by BOE, you can see a HGC with FARM rate (or whatever they care) >50%. Good luck you are NOT being "selected".

Wow, your kid tested in at 90th percentile three years ago, now kids are getting rejected with 99%, and you’re somehow complaining that “the quality degraded year by year.”

Was DD already headed to TPMS?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think a conversation needed is how do the non magnet “home” schools accommodate these high achieving students. If they’ve identified a peer group. Will they group these students together (outside of IM & Advance English)

My child was not accepted. Straight As (at an HGC) MAP scores above 250, 5s on PARCC, 99% in all four areas. Asian. Non-w school.

Anyone know if grades at an HGC were weighted equally to non-HGC schools?

I agree with this. From both a diversity perspective and a meeting-student-needs perspective, seems like the kids from good home schools aren't getting into the magnts. That's ok - IF the home schools are going to be ready to support them. Yes, they're maybe better than some of the other schools, but that doesnt mean that teachers are ready to add enrichment activities for all these kids in the 99% percentiles who normally would be shipped out to magnets.

I'm glad I live in a good school area (& that we chose wisely & paid for the privilege!) but want to be sure it's going to meet my kids needs.

This x100. Not the part about my feeling like a 'good school area' is so important, but rather that ANY home middle school with a significant # of kids that are in the top 1% should be meeting these kids' needs! It's unacceptable to not have gifted tracks for kids outside the 200 top kids in these school clusters, if there are so many other gifted kids in the system.

I for one do not mind that there is an effort to get gifted children of presumably less-privileged backgrounds into a gifted track to cultivate their talents. The universal testing approach, if it achieves this, is fine with me. The theory that the magnet places are going to students with no gifted 'peer groups' at their schools, which by extension implies that they are from underperforming schools and lower socioeconomic backgrounds, is also ok with me--to the extent that the existing home schools' "'peer groups" of gifted students would actually mean something (like, they are in a group that receives academic attention commensurate with their academic potential.)
It seems that this is not the case, however. I feel like contacting my child's future MS to ask what plans they have for meeting these gifted kids' needs. After all, I now have the official MCPS CogAT results that show my child is in the top 1%.
If there was a gifted but disadvantaged child (let's say, little home support and non-native English speaking parents) at my kids' home middle school, how is it serving this child's needs to be at a middle school with no gifted program? theoretically, this disadvantaged child would be one that MCPS would want to help succeed, but putting him/her in a general educational track does not do this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I do not have a kid tested this year. DD admitted to TMPS 3 yrs ago ~90% on test scores.
As far as I can tell, MCPS Magnet/HGC quality degraded year by year.
Probably with 3+ years water-down by BOE, you can see a HGC with FARM rate (or whatever they care) >50%. Good luck you are NOT being "selected".

Wow, your kid tested in at 90th percentile three years ago, now kids are getting rejected with 99%, and you’re somehow complaining that “the quality degraded year by year.”

Not that I agree with sentiments this poster is expressing, but the 90 percent test score from a few years ago was likely something much different -- like, her kid scored better than 90 percent of the kids who took the test that year, not that her kid was in the 90th percentile against some national norm.

I think it's interesting that practically no one has posted here that their kid got accepted -- maybe one poster a few pages ago who didn't share test scores. Where are all those kids? I guess not on DCUM, for one.

[Anonymous]

My take is rejection letters first, acceptance letter next.

[Anonymous]

Similar story here -- rejected, no wait list, 98-99% across the board, mostly As and a few Bs at HGC, Asian. Our MS is North Bethesda.

We are going to fight this all the way to MD Board of Education, if for no other reason than to learn about this new "black box" process that MCPS has adopted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My take is rejection letters first, acceptance letter next.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Similar story here -- rejected, no wait list, 98-99% across the board, mostly As and a few Bs at HGC, Asian. Our MS is North Bethesda.

We are going to fight this all the way to MD Board of Education, if for no other reason than to learn about this new "black box" process that MCPS has adopted.

Well, good luck with that! Please come back and let us know how it goes.

[Anonymous]

We are at the CES where 100% of the CES population + about 40 homeschool students were tested. That's more than the population of an entire magnet school at 1 elementary school. At our home school the population of 5th graders taking the test exploded from hovering around 7 to hovering around 90. With this huge volume of potential students results are bound to be different than the usual + they changed the test on top of that. We haven't gotten our results yet, but are at one of the MS with a peer group that has already been mentioned, so I am not holding my breath!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar story here -- rejected, no wait list, 98-99% across the board, mostly As and a few Bs at HGC, Asian. Our MS is North Bethesda.

We are going to fight this all the way to MD Board of Education, if for no other reason than to learn about this new "black box" process that MCPS has adopted.

Well, good luck with that! Please come back and let us know how it goes.

Here's what the current MCPS statement about how they are making the selections this time around.


http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/c...k%20Magnet%20ProgramsFINAL.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Similar story here -- rejected, no wait list, 98-99% across the board, mostly As and a few Bs at HGC, Asian. Our MS is North Bethesda.

We are going to fight this all the way to MD Board of Education, if for no other reason than to learn about this new "black box" process that MCPS has adopted.

Wouldn't it be better --instead of fighting--to lobby the Board of Ed to put more things in place to get an honors course or cohort at your the local school? It seems like your child had some Bs, was 98%in one or more compents (vs. 99% for other also-rejected PPs) and maybe he/she didn't test well on that 'questionnaire" part of the assessment. I'd imagine you'd have more luck uniting with other parents in a similar boat and trying to make some good come out of it for other people as well....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Similar story here -- rejected, no wait list, 98-99% across the board, mostly As and a few Bs at HGC, Asian. Our MS is North Bethesda.

We are going to fight this all the way to MD Board of Education, if for no other reason than to learn about this new "black box" process that MCPS has adopted.

Well, good luck with that! Please come back and let us know how it goes.

Here's what the current MCPS statement about how they are making the selections this time around.


http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/c...k%20Magnet%20ProgramsFINAL.pdf

The link here is broken, the one at post at 8:15 above works. They look at MAP, Cogat, PARCC, whether there is a group of 20 peers at home school, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I expect that percentile scores are national. And it looks as if many kids with 99% scores were rejected. So all that this establishes is that MCPS gifted programs are looking for the top .1% to .5% or so, not the top 1%. Maybe they should extend the percentile scores one more decimal point so we can see the difference between a national percentile score of 99.0% and 99.9%.

I think this is a much more logical explanation than some people's suggestions here that their 99%-scoring student was rejected because of diversity or because of their home school.

My kid, who was rejected, consistently scores much above what it takes to make the 99th percentile on things like MAP R and MAP M. So while they didn't tell us what his score was for this test in a way that we could determine that, I don't know why it would be different than any other test he ever took where he scored in the tippy top of the 99th percentile. High PARCC scores are also pretty unusual in MCPS, and many of us are reporting that too. I don't remember the number, but my kid on math scored way to the right of whatever the minimum was for a 5. His reading scores are also good, just not quite as tippy top high. So yes, I think diversity and home school cohort is the explanation.

Not sure about diversity - don't think that's the issue - I do think - because they've told us- that home school is the issue - if there's a cohort in the home school that counts against the child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I expect that percentile scores are national. And it looks as if many kids with 99% scores were rejected. So all that this establishes is that MCPS gifted programs are looking for the top .1% to .5% or so, not the top 1%. Maybe they should extend the percentile scores one more decimal point so we can see the difference between a national percentile score of 99.0% and 99.9%.

I think this is a much more logical explanation than some people's suggestions here that their 99%-scoring student was rejected because of diversity or because of their home school.

Come on, even national 1% ought to be good enough for mcps magnet, we are talking about ~200 seats these two school combined. Obviously test scores are not the main factor for admission.

Over 3000 kids took the test - and they were all identified as potentially right - so yes, test scores can be the main factor. you are talking about a less than 10% chance of admission.

[Anonymous]

7% admission rate.

[Anonymous]

This is so incredibly mess up. Why can't we follow the fairfax system?