I don't get it- very few CES kids get into magnet school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow...these numbers are shocking to me. No wonder Asians are pissed. If you look at the report card grades, Asians carry the weight of pushing the scores upward in practically every school in mcps. You look at these report and see the drastic dropoff of Asians accepted, versus whites versus other races.

Really, Asians? There are that many students in MCPS schools who are immigrants from Asia?

Or are you talking about American kids?

DP

They are all American kids. They should all be labeled American kids.

But MCPS has decided to divide up the groups by race and has put an enormous amount of time and energy in focusing on the Achievement Gap. Take it up with MCPS. Personally, I’d prefer they’d quit their obsession with race.

I like to say Asian American, but I notice MCPS constantly labeling my child as just Asian!!! Did you not see all the reports MCPS disperses. Despite the fact that my kid is 2nd generation ASIAN-AMERICAN we are still just Asians. At least they give the "African-American" label.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I haven't seen a lot of disagreement to universal screening. I think even the people who are upset their children didn't get in see the logic in universal screening. That is not the problem.
What people are up in arms about is that they are no longer picking the top scoring kids from the county. They argue that the reason MCPS isn't doing this is because if you took the top scoring kids from the county even WITH universal screening you would still get a disproportionate group of Asian American kids admitted.

So they made up this peer cohort criteria to get their desired results which is to increase the number of URMs. The argument is that if MCPS was able to increase the number of URMs by taking all the top scoring kids from the county they would get rid of the peer cohort criteria. Basically MCPS is making up whatever criteria serves their purpose which is to make the magnet programs more diverse and decrease the number of Asian American students and increase URM students. Some would call that discrimination while others would not. I'm not expressing an opinion about what whether it is good or bad, but this is what MCPS has done.

ALL of the admissions criteria are "made up". By definition. There is no Deity handing down stone tablets with middle-school magnet admissions criteria just southwest of the intersection of Penn Shop Road and Ridge Road.

What's more, the school district gets to choose its admissions criteria (within the bounds of the law). They might not be the ones you would choose, or the ones I would choose, but that's something the school district gets to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I like to say Asian American, but I notice MCPS constantly labeling my child as just Asian!!! Did you not see all the reports MCPS disperses. Despite the fact that my kid is 2nd generation ASIAN-AMERICAN we are still just Asians. At least they give the "African-American" label.

Then MCPS should stop doing that!

(I hadn't noticed it, but I will start paying attention.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I like to say Asian American, but I notice MCPS constantly labeling my child as just Asian!!! Did you not see all the reports MCPS disperses. Despite the fact that my kid is 2nd generation ASIAN-AMERICAN we are still just Asians. At least they give the "African-American" label.

Then MCPS should stop doing that!

(I hadn't noticed it, but I will start paying attention.)

It's a federal guideline for their collection of race and ethnicity data.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/rschstat/guid/raceethnicity/questions.html

[Anonymous]

Last year, when it's the first time to apply universal screening and the cohort idea to the MS GT admission, I 100% sure that the idea of expansion of two GT course curricula to local MSs was not mentioned at all in the beginning. It was after the selection results were published and parents got furious that AEI brought up this idea, so they were not prepared at all, and teachers were not got trained of the curriculum until the end of the summer. Everything was in a hassle, all in order to calm down the furious parents. Hopefully this year they could be more prepared and let the expansion of GT curriculum really going on in the "cohort" MSs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow...these numbers are shocking to me. No wonder Asians are pissed. If you look at the report card grades, Asians carry the weight of pushing the scores upward in practically every school in mcps. You look at these report and see the drastic dropoff of Asians accepted, versus whites versus other races.

Really, Asians? There are that many students in MCPS schools who are immigrants from Asia?

Or are you talking about American kids?

DP

They are all American kids. They should all be labeled American kids.

But MCPS has decided to divide up the groups by race and has put an enormous amount of time and energy in focusing on the Achievement Gap. Take it up with MCPS. Personally, I’d prefer they’d quit their obsession with race.

No, this wasn't an MCPS decision, it's a result of No Child Left Behind. Schools are no longer allowed to report overall averages and say good enough, they need to demonstrate that each subgroup is also performing. This is not new, it's been in effect the entire time current MCPS students have been in school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Last year, when it's the first time to apply universal screening and the cohort idea to the MS GT admission, I 100% sure that the idea of expansion of two GT course curricula to local MSs was not mentioned at all in the beginning. It was after the selection results were published and parents got furious that AEI brought up this idea, so they were not prepared at all, and teachers were not got trained of the curriculum until the end of the summer. Everything was in a hassle, all in order to calm down the furious parents. Hopefully this year they could be more prepared and let the expansion of GT curriculum really going on in the "cohort" MSs.

I was also at the same meetings and they did mention that they would increase access to GT curriculum, it was on the slide at the meeting at Blair (2 years ago). They didn't go in depth explaining what that meant, but it was there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Last year, when it's the first time to apply universal screening and the cohort idea to the MS GT admission, I 100% sure that the idea of expansion of two GT course curricula to local MSs was not mentioned at all in the beginning. It was after the selection results were published and parents got furious that AEI brought up this idea, so they were not prepared at all, and teachers were not got trained of the curriculum until the end of the summer. Everything was in a hassle, all in order to calm down the furious parents. Hopefully this year they could be more prepared and let the expansion of GT curriculum really going on in the "cohort" MSs.

I was also at the same meetings and they did mention that they would increase access to GT curriculum, it was on the slide at the meeting at Blair (2 years ago). They didn't go in depth explaining what that meant, but it was there.

Yes, and it was stated in one of their early documents prior to the selection process.

[Anonymous]

Just to add an anecdote to the discussion upthread, I am a highly educated, middle class, native English speaker. When I heard about the CES program, I understood it to be for the "top 2-3 percent" of kids in MCPS.

I absolutely did not think that my children were in the top 2-3 percent of kids in the district and might not have put them through the testing process.

However, through bus stop and book club discussions, I saw kids who seemed a lot like my own get into both the HGC and middle school magnets. As did my kids.

That's the power of being "in the know." It isn't just knowing that the program and test exists - it is knowing people who have been accepted and seeing what that looks like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Wow...these numbers are shocking to me. No wonder Asians are pissed. If you look at the report card grades, Asians carry the weight of pushing the scores upward in practically every school in mcps. You look at these report and see the drastic dropoff of Asians accepted, versus whites versus other races.

Really, Asians? There are that many students in MCPS schools who are immigrants from Asia?

Or are you talking about American kids?

DP

They are all American kids. They should all be labeled American kids.

But MCPS has decided to divide up the groups by race and has put an enormous amount of time and energy in focusing on the Achievement Gap. Take it up with MCPS. Personally, I’d prefer they’d quit their obsession with race.

I like to say Asian American, but I notice MCPS constantly labeling my child as just Asian!!! Did you not see all the reports MCPS disperses. Despite the fact that my kid is 2nd generation ASIAN-AMERICAN we are still just Asians. At least they give the "African-American" label.

Ha! So true.

My neighbor is a second generation Asian kid. Parenta born and raised in NY. Parents don’t even speak the language of their country because parents grew up here. Yet, the kid is labeled as Asian. The dad jokes that he’s about as Asian as me.

The labels are ridiculous. And dividing kids up by labels is even worse.

[Anonymous]

Yep, talking about separate minorities into race groups and pit them against each other. Guess which race group benefitted the most from the magnet reforms? And why is openly discriminating Asian Americans openly is ok while stereotyping other minority groups is at least distasteful?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yep, talking about separate minorities into race groups and pit them against each other. Guess which race group benefitted the most from the magnet reforms? And why is openly discriminating Asian Americans openly is ok while stereotyping other minority groups is at least distasteful?

For MCPS to openly discriminate against Asian-Americans is illegal. You should file a lawsuit. I kept reading on DCUM last year that it would be a slam-dunk.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
I haven't seen a lot of disagreement to universal screening. I think even the people who are upset their children didn't get in see the logic in universal screening. That is not the problem.
What people are up in arms about is that they are no longer picking the top scoring kids from the county. They argue that the reason MCPS isn't doing this is because if you took the top scoring kids from the county even WITH universal screening you would still get a disproportionate group of Asian American kids admitted.

So they made up this peer cohort criteria to get their desired results which is to increase the number of URMs. The argument is that if MCPS was able to increase the number of URMs by taking all the top scoring kids from the county they would get rid of the peer cohort criteria. Basically MCPS is making up whatever criteria serves their purpose which is to make the magnet programs more diverse and decrease the number of Asian American students and increase URM students. Some would call that discrimination while others would not. I'm not expressing an opinion about what whether it is good or bad, but this is what MCPS has done.

ALL of the admissions criteria are "made up". By definition. There is no Deity handing down stone tablets with middle-school magnet admissions criteria just southwest of the intersection of Penn Shop Road and Ridge Road.

What's more, the school district gets to choose its admissions criteria (within the bounds of the law). They might not be the ones you would choose, or the ones I would choose, but that's something the school district gets to do.

Calm down. I don't know why people have to keep repeating this but the obviously MCPS can make up whatever criteria they want AS LONG AS IT ISN'T DESIGNED TO DISCRIMINATE against a protected category of student such as those of a certain race. The issue that people are having is that the new criteria seem designed to target kids of a certain race that are "overrepresented."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I like to say Asian American, but I notice MCPS constantly labeling my child as just Asian!!! Did you not see all the reports MCPS disperses. Despite the fact that my kid is 2nd generation ASIAN-AMERICAN we are still just Asians. At least they give the "African-American" label.

Then MCPS should stop doing that!

(I hadn't noticed it, but I will start paying attention.)

It's a federal guideline for their collection of race and ethnicity data.

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/rschstat/guid/raceethnicity/questions.html

It is weird that students who are black can be African American but students who are Asian are just Asian. Not Asian American.


This is from the document above.

What is this person's race? Mark one or more races to indicate what this person considers himself/herself to be.

White

Black or African American

Asian

American Indian or Alaska Native

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

[Anonymous]

The “overrepresented” clause is ridiculous. Overrepresented based on what? Now tell me the ideal is not a racial quota system.