MoCo is diverse, for sure, but MCPS schools are not

[Anonymous]

People make large donations directly to the school??? For what? PTA activities? Big deal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People make large donations directly to the school??? For what? PTA activities? Big deal.

Actually NOT PTA activities. The PTA organization as a local, state, and national entity prohibits specific types of donations that the school's foundations were created to circumvent. For examples - scholarships directly to teachers for continuing education purposes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ding! Ding! Ding!

The class ratio is key. 12 kids in Title I vs. God knows how many in the Fancypants school.

How would bussing impact the ratio and additional services provided in Title I schools? Throw the kids who are struggling into much larger classes so they have the benefit of being in a classroom with white kids? Make all schools have a limit of 12 kids per class? Um, good luck with that!

But here is the thing. They rather go to a school with white kids with better test scores. But yet those that don't want that are racist? Huh

[Anonymous]

Where are the caps on class size 12 kids in the red zone? Our title one school last year had about 18 or 19 kids per 1 teacher (no in-class aide that I saw). Although class size is much bigger in the west I think they also have aides and generally the kids come better prepared so do not need as much hand holding as the title 1 schools' kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Your argument is that the families of the kids in the high SES area value education more, spend money on supplementing or replacing aspects of the curriculum that are missing, support the schools more, are more active in their kids education and therefore these kids do better and they should be bussed into the lower SES schools to provide what..role models? This doesn't even work when the balance shifts where there are enough low SES students to reinforce the bad habits.

There is an awful lot of arguing that poor kids are going to do badly in school, and that's just how it is, and there's nothing anybody can do to change it, and the only thing any attempt to fix it will do is bring down the rich kids.

However, the fact is that poor kids do much better in low-poverty schools than in high-poverty schools. This is not up for debate. It is a fact.

If you want poor kids to do better in school, then you need to get them out of high-poverty schools. If you don't, then you don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

However, the fact is that poor kids do much better in low-poverty schools than in high-poverty schools. This is not up for debate. It is a fact.

The fact is that poor kids *sometimes* do better in low-poverty school.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027858,00.html

"That's why so many in the reform community see issues such as improving teacher effectiveness, providing a better curriculum and expanding high-performing charter schools in underserved communities as more impactful and immediate steps than grand schemes to change housing policy or school-district boundaries. And of course, there are plenty of schools that demonstrate that high poverty rates and low achievement are not inexorably linked."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where are the caps on class size 12 kids in the red zone? Our title one school last year had about 18 or 19 kids per 1 teacher (no in-class aide that I saw). Although class size is much bigger in the west I think they also have aides and generally the kids come better prepared so do not need as much hand holding as the title 1 schools' kids.

33 kids and no aides unless a special needs kid has an IEP for one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

However, the fact is that poor kids do much better in low-poverty schools than in high-poverty schools. This is not up for debate. It is a fact.

The fact is that poor kids *sometimes* do better in low-poverty school.

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2027858,00.html

"That's why so many in the reform community see issues such as improving teacher effectiveness, providing a better curriculum and expanding high-performing charter schools in underserved communities as more impactful and immediate steps than grand schemes to change housing policy or school-district boundaries. And of course, there are plenty of schools that demonstrate that high poverty rates and low achievement are not inexorably linked."

Let's pull the whole quote from your linked piece:

"No one in the mainstream of the education debate wants segregated schools. But while such schools are not an immutable condition, they are an unfortunate fact of life. That's why so many in the reform community see issues such as improving teacher effectiveness, providing a better curriculum and expanding high-performing charter schools in underserved communities as more impactful and immediate steps than grand schemes to change housing policy or school-district boundaries. And of course, there are plenty of schools that demonstrate that high poverty rates and low achievement are not inexorably linked. These reformers, myself included, are not opposed to efforts to create more economically integrated schools. We're just keenly attuned to the practical constraints."

That comes out different, doesn't it?

[Anonymous]

I'm new to the thread, and my kids attend a school that is over 70% white. People always think of our school as fairly homogenous, but it really isn't. When I started up a little PTA gig to promote diversity and inclusion and for things like international night, I did a little survey to figure out who's who and we have 34 home languages in a school of 700, and 17 different religions, and that is without splitting protestants. That's pretty mindblowing, and cool. I think it's important to look beyond skin color and realize that diversity can be much more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm new to the thread, and my kids attend a school that is over 70% white. People always think of our school as fairly homogenous, but it really isn't. When I started up a little PTA gig to promote diversity and inclusion and for things like international night, I did a little survey to figure out who's who and we have 34 home languages in a school of 700, and 17 different religions, and that is without splitting protestants. That's pretty mindblowing, and cool. I think it's important to look beyond skin color and realize that diversity can be much more.

It is fairly homogeneously white, though.

Black/white/Hispanic/Asian/multiple and poor/non-poor are not the be-all end-all of measures of diversity. But they are fundamental measures of diversity in the US, just the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm new to the thread, and my kids attend a school that is over 70% white. People always think of our school as fairly homogenous, but it really isn't. When I started up a little PTA gig to promote diversity and inclusion and for things like international night, I did a little survey to figure out who's who and we have 34 home languages in a school of 700, and 17 different religions, and that is without splitting protestants. That's pretty mindblowing, and cool. I think it's important to look beyond skin color and realize that diversity can be much more.

I am Italian-American and bilingual. Am I in the "diverse" category?

White is white.

And there's also SES diversity.

[Anonymous]

Are the white kids with the au pair who speaks mandarin counted as diversity at your school?

[Anonymous]

I don't give a rat's ass about diversity, to be honest. I was brought up in a dual-culture household. That's enough for me.

I want my kids to be in classrooms with kids who are focused and on or above level. I am not about to use my kids as guinea pigs to prove that I'm a super hip liberal.

We moved b/c our local schools were awful. My kids are happy and doing well in their calm environment.

But here's the thing; we now have the extremes in Mo Co. Schools are either high performing and "safe" or low performing and dangerous.

So what choice do parents have? If you have the means, you move.

sorry - But that's the truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm new to the thread, and my kids attend a school that is over 70% white. People always think of our school as fairly homogenous, but it really isn't. When I started up a little PTA gig to promote diversity and inclusion and for things like international night, I did a little survey to figure out who's who and we have 34 home languages in a school of 700, and 17 different religions, and that is without splitting protestants. That's pretty mindblowing, and cool. I think it's important to look beyond skin color and realize that diversity can be much more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm new to the thread, and my kids attend a school that is over 70% white. People always think of our school as fairly homogenous, but it really isn't. When I started up a little PTA gig to promote diversity and inclusion and for things like international night, I did a little survey to figure out who's who and we have 34 home languages in a school of 700, and 17 different religions, and that is without splitting protestants. That's pretty mindblowing, and cool. I think it's important to look beyond skin color and realize that diversity can be much more.

Your school sounds lovely and truly diverse. Diverse does not mean that only people who are AA or Hispanic can be counted. If that's what people want to count, than say so. Using a euphemism such as " diverse" because it sounds nicer than saying we're only interested in counting the number of AA or Hispanics is a load of political crap.