Reaction to "Study of Choice and Special Academic Programs: Report of Findings and Recommendations"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For the most part, SES is tied to parents cognitive ability, and smart people generally have smart kids.

Good read related to this talking about research using the NLSY dataset.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/04/income-weath-and-iq.html

And one about IQ and SES by examining children within the same family (obviously controls for SES)

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/03/ses-and-iq.html

Yes, and for the most part, the moon is made of green cheese.

So, you think that there's no correlation between IQ and income, and IQ isn't heritable. I'm not the one who believes in fairy tales.

My parents were poor immigrants; uneducated in their home country because there was no really free public education there; their parents were also not educated. They were mostly poor farmers. They have only ever worked blue collar jobs here, and at one point, we were on food stamps.

However, they are not unintelligent. Quite the opposite. My siblings and I have never been labeled "gifted". But, most of us got really good grades because our parents, though they could never help us with hw, always stressed doing well in school, and two of us now earn six figures. Some of my parents' grandkids have been labeled "gifted".

So, no, IQ not always equal to SES. Sometimes, it's just because of circumstance.

Conversely, I knew a guy who owned his own business, doing fairly well, but was dumb as sh1t. One of his employees would referred to him as "dumb lucky". It was purely by circumstance and social networking that got him to where he is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So if my kid wants to be an astronaut and NASA doesn't select him...we should end space travel?

Obviously. If your kid doesn't get selected then the process is clearly biased and unfair.

In MCPS, because not enough blacks and hispanics test into the "selective" programs then the solution is to change the selection criteria to consider race. Changing the criteria is just as unfair. Again, it doesn't make sense that in a public school system that such programs are so highly competitive that everyone is looking for a leg up to get in.

Not just the "selective" programs. MCPS is trying to reduce the "Achievement Gap" of the whole school district. Because it's so dame hard to improve the lower end of the gap, the alternative would be to drag the front runners down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Not just the "selective" programs. MCPS is trying to reduce the "Achievement Gap" of the whole school district. Because it's so dame hard to improve the lower end of the gap, the alternative would be to drag the front runners down.

Yes, that's the favored DCUM conspiracy theory. As with most conspiracy theories, there's no evidence for it, but that's never stopped anyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

For the most part, SES is tied to parents cognitive ability, and smart people generally have smart kids.

Good read related to this talking about research using the NLSY dataset.

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2015/04/income-weath-and-iq.html

And one about IQ and SES by examining children within the same family (obviously controls for SES)

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/03/ses-and-iq.html

Yes, and for the most part, the moon is made of green cheese.

So, you think that there's no correlation between IQ and income, and IQ isn't heritable. I'm not the one who believes in fairy tales.

My parents were poor immigrants; uneducated in their home country because there was no really free public education there; their parents were also not educated. They were mostly poor farmers. They have only ever worked blue collar jobs here, and at one point, we were on food stamps.

However, they are not unintelligent. Quite the opposite. My siblings and I have never been labeled "gifted". But, most of us got really good grades because our parents, though they could never help us with hw, always stressed doing well in school, and two of us now earn six figures. Some of my parents' grandkids have been labeled "gifted".

So, no, IQ not always equal to SES. Sometimes, it's just because of circumstance.

Conversely, I knew a guy who owned his own business, doing fairly well, but was dumb as sh1t. One of his employees would referred to him as "dumb lucky". It was purely by circumstance and social networking that got him to where he is.

Of course; nobody said it was a perfect correlation. You can always find individual situations that buck any group trend. Muggy Bogues was an NBA player that was 5'3"; does that prove that height is not strongly correlated to NBA success or is he just an outlier?

The simple fact is smart people (as a group) earn more money. That fact backed up by a lot of empirical data. Smart people (generally) have smart kids; that's also backed up by a lot of data. Again, these are perfect correlations and there are general exceptions, but when viewed as a group the trend is very clear.

[Anonymous]

PP, the simple fact is that there are no simple facts about history, economics, and society. If you want to believe that there are -- well, there really is no dialogue possible when the dispute about reality is this fundamental.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$6 millón is still $6 million. Better to spread it around the entire county when there are more kids wanting to do the programs than slots for the programs.

It's $38.35 per student.

Can you show us how you came up with $38.35?

$6 million for busing to HGC and magnet programs is more than $38.35 per student being bused. It is also only a reflection of the busing cost, not the total cost of the programs. How much is being spent on students in selective programs vs. the rest of the kids in the county.

If the Board of Education truly values closing the Achievement Gap, then why are they spending so much on these selective programs vs. using the money toward more resources and support for the disadvantaged, low income student populations?

The Board of Education should end these programs and increase opportunities for challenging programs all local schools for all students who want to participate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$6 millón is still $6 million. Better to spread it around the entire county when there are more kids wanting to do the programs than slots for the programs.

It's $38.35 per student.

Can you show us how you came up with $38.35?

$6 million for busing to HGC and magnet programs is more than $38.35 per student being bused. It is also only a reflection of the busing cost, not the total cost of the programs. How much is being spent on students in selective programs vs. the rest of the kids in the county.

If the Board of Education truly values closing the Achievement Gap, then why are they spending so much on these selective programs vs. using the money toward more resources and support for the disadvantaged, low income student populations?

The Board of Education should end these programs and increase opportunities for challenging programs all local schools for all students who want to participate.

$6,000,000 divided by 156,447 students = $38.35 per student.

Also, the $6 million is not just the cost of the busing. It's the total marginal cost of the programs.

[Anonymous]

If the Board of Education truly values closing the Achievement Gap, then why are they spending so much on these selective programs vs. using the money toward more resources and support for the disadvantaged, low income student populations?


MCPS already puts lots of resources toward disadvantaged students. That does not mean that high achieving students should be ignored. Congratulations..based on your outstanding grades and test scores you are no longer eligible for public school in MCPS!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A very timely piece is in today's NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/10/upshot/why-talented-black-and-hispanic-students-can-go-undiscovered.html?_r=1

"In 2005, in an effort to reduce that disparity, Broward County introduced a universal screening program, requiring that all second graders take a short nonverbal test, with high scorers referred for I.Q. testing. Under the previous system, the district had relied on teachers and parents to make those referrals.

The economists David Card of the University of California, Berkeley, and Laura Giuliano of the University of Miami studied the effects of this policy shift. The results were striking.

The share of Hispanic children identified as gifted tripled, to 6 percent from 2 percent. The share of black children rose to 3 percent from 1 percent. For whites, the gain was more muted, to 8 percent from 6 percent.
Why did the new screening system find so many more gifted children, especially among blacks and Hispanics? It did not rely on teachers and parents to winnow students. The researchers found that teachers and parents were less likely to refer high-ability blacks and Hispanics, as well as children learning English as a second language, for I.Q. testing. The universal test leveled the playing field.

Multiple factors could be at work here: Teachers may have lower expectations for these children, and their parents may be unfamiliar with the process and the programs. Whatever the reason, the evidence indicates that relying on teachers and parents increases racial and ethnic disparities."

Then let's just go strictly by test results. That should go over well.

MCPS does this now where all 2nd graders take Inview. Curious, are there any stats on how kids do across demographics? That should be a good indicator of how such a policy (test results only) would work out.

Excellent idea. Make all the Inview high performers take the entrance test to HGC. Also, let all 3rd graders in host school take the HGC test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If the Board of Education truly values closing the Achievement Gap, then why are they spending so much on these selective programs vs. using the money toward more resources and support for the disadvantaged, low income student populations?

MCPS already puts lots of resources toward disadvantaged students. That does not mean that high achieving students should be ignored. Congratulations..based on your outstanding grades and test scores you are no longer eligible for public school in MCPS!

I think MCPS should stop FARMS program and instead get more tutoring and teaching for disadvantaged and low income students. They are in the business of education, not in the business of providing welfare. Let the county give food stamps etc to the families. MCPS will save a lot of money in this way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think MCPS should stop FARMS program and instead get more tutoring and teaching for disadvantaged and low income students. They are in the business of education, not in the business of providing welfare. Let the county give food stamps etc to the families. MCPS will save a lot of money in this way.

Do you want MCPS to violate federal law?

(Also, SNAP is a federal program, not a county program.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:tired of this b**shit. MCPS is trying so hard to achieve their goal. I would suggest using "athletic skill" instead of "non-cognitive skil"l for faster result

Or baseball watching skill?

It is so bad that they think the baseball picture is a good analogy in this context.

Why is it a bad analogy?

Oooh... can I answer this one? I am a marketing consultant. I am giving my advice to MCPS for free, even though I am not an URM and my kids are in magnet programs. When you use an image to get a point across - it has to be unambiguous. Much more than words. The idea has to come through clearly without room for any other interpretation.



1) Three different kids, based on their height it looks that one is in HS, one in MS and one in ES. Not the same requirements of needs.

2) The differences is inherent in the children itself (height or age in this case, race/indifferent parenting IRL) and not in the circumstances (for example rich kid is in a safe place home with computers and is able to study, poor kid has no computer and is in a gang-infested neighborhood OR Rich kid has enough to eat and has time to study AND poor kid has to take care of siblings and do a part time job).

3) The children are watching a game from outside the stadium, they have not paid the price of the tickets and so it is sort of a moral gray area, for being dishonest. (For using as a graphic)

4)In the graphic, there is no actual participation in the game. These kids are only watching a game. There is no indication how all three could play in the game, instead of passively watching. But the reality is that for them to play in a game they need talent.

5) Equity would be to allow each child to participate in activities that align with their interests. Maybe first child wants participate in robotics competition, maybe the second child want to participate in a singing competition, maybe the third wants to participate in a basketball competition. So, the concept of meeting needs is removed altogether. As a result, the perception is that MCPS staff responsible for equity are actually not looking at equity, they are looking to get more freebies for URM at the cost of Asian and Whites.

6) From a parental perspective, putting the smallest child on two boxes, increases the risk of him falling from a greater height, or being hit by an errant ball. He was safer under equality in some ways. So, a bad analogy and poor graphic choice. Makes me shake my head at the stupidity of MCPS staff.

I am a marketing consultant. This is a very flawed image and if MCPS was my client I would not have used it. I also want to compare it with another image on the web, which I am guessing was the original image and idea which was modified to be used for the current purpose. The original was even more flawed.



1) The color of the three individuals, suggested that the inquality was inherent within the Black community itself (The kid of the wealthy black lawyer and the kid of the minimum wage earning single black woman have different realities, and the wealthy kid still gets to use the affirmative action programs to further himself). So, in the graphic that MCPS used had three white individuals. Instead they should have used stick figures that did not suggest race or age.

2) The inherent dishonesty of watching a game without paying for the tickets for the game. Plays into the perception of URM trying to get benefits without working for it. Instead they should have shown an activity in which all were participating and had a common goal of societal achievement. MCPS please pay attention to my free advice.

3) It looked like a black grownup with two kids, (dad with children - one looks like a toddler), looking at a sports game that may or maynot interest the youngest. It would have been different if the grownup was actively participating in an enrichment activity with his children. So played into the negative stereotype of disengaged parent. Here MCPS did the right thing by making all the figures alike and looking like kids in the graphic they did use.

4) Not participating, just being spectators. Again the image is one of passivity. Really? No one in MCPS and the expensive consulting company have the brains to see this?

5) The youngest child was safer watching the game from a crack in the fence before. He is liable to tumble down from the two boxes or get a concussion from a ball. Again - a bad image to use.


Oh, and we will go the private route if we get impacted by the change suggested by MCPS, and plan to move to VA. I hope more citizens will do the same.

I must have missed this the first time around! Excellent analysis.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:$6 millón is still $6 million. Better to spread it around the entire county when there are more kids wanting to do the programs than slots for the programs.

It's $38.35 per student.

Can you show us how you came up with $38.35?

$6 million for busing to HGC and magnet programs is more than $38.35 per student being bused. It is also only a reflection of the busing cost, not the total cost of the programs. How much is being spent on students in selective programs vs. the rest of the kids in the county.

If the Board of Education truly values closing the Achievement Gap, then why are they spending so much on these selective programs vs. using the money toward more resources and support for the disadvantaged, low income student populations?

The Board of Education should end these programs and increase opportunities for challenging programs all local schools for all students who want to participate.

$6,000,000 divided by 156,447 students = $38.35 per student.

Also, the $6 million is not just the cost of the busing. It's the total marginal cost of the programs.

Wow! That's peanuts.
I am quite willing to pay $40 a year to MCPS for the cost of the program for my magnet student. Actually, I am quite willing to pay $80, so that MCPS can use the extra money for closing achievement gap.