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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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

Google “perpetual foreigner” and you’ll know why.

[Anonymous]

It wasn’t a magnet program when most of the students were coming from one middle school. It makes sense to keep those students at their home school and reserve magnet seats for those with fewer peers. The peer cohort at the home middle school should receive adequate instruction. But it will never be enough for some parents who viewed the magnet program as a prize and feel robbed of the “magnet label”.

Also the program as it was prior to these changes was not serving the brightest students. I laugh when I read parents here saying the magnet program no longer serves the highest achievers. It never did, folks. It was serving the students whose parents referred. It wasn’t perfect before.

[Anonymous]

I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

[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.

This is absurd. The MCPS reports I've seen just say BL, HS, WH or AS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

That depends on how you define "the most qualified students", doesn't it?

The relevant factors for admission include your home middle school. MCPS has decided that students who don't have a cohort at their home middle school are more qualified for the middle school magnet programs than students who do have a cohort at their home middle school. This seems reasonable to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts. Their kid not being invited because she has a cohort Is just easier for parents to swallow than “they scored high, but not high enough”, which is what a lot of posted cogat results are showing. 99 percentile nationally but only 86th percentile MCPS? Universal testing is turning up more bright students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

That depends on how you define "the most qualified students", doesn't it?

The relevant factors for admission include your home middle school. MCPS has decided that students who don't have a cohort at their home middle school are more qualified for the middle school magnet programs than students who do have a cohort at their home middle school. This seems reasonable to me.

Shouldn’t the outcome also be measured? Maybe SAT score is not a good one, but there must something to gauge the academical benefits of these programs with its various admission experiments. It does look right now MCPS deems any change successful as long as it reduces the Asian percentage.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts. Their kid not being invited because she has a cohort Is just easier for parents to swallow than “they scored high, but not high enough”, which is what a lot of posted cogat results are showing. 99 percentile nationally but only 86th percentile MCPS? Universal testing is turning up more bright students.

It's easier for some parents to feel victimized than accept there were more qualified applicants than theirs, but at least in my experience as a TPMS magnet parent, your assessment seems true.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts. Their kid not being invited because she has a cohort Is just easier for parents to swallow than “they scored high, but not high enough”, which is what a lot of posted cogat results are showing. 99 percentile nationally but only 86th percentile MCPS? Universal testing is turning up more bright students.

It's easier for some parents to feel victimized than accept there were more qualified applicants than theirs, but at least in my experience as a TPMS magnet parent, your assessment seems true.

I have no idea as a TPMS magnet parent. Mind sharing how you reached the conclusion?

[Anonymous]

I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts.

Except it didn't.

MCPS determined a % (95%) that it deemed highly capable and the universal testing revealed extremely large % of white students who met that criteria beyond the % that had applied in the past. If MCPS had selected from the larger group and offered seats to students who performed the highest out of the highly capable group they would have ended up with a magnet in a DCC school filled with white and asian kids primarily from the W schools.

The goal was to get the magnet demographic to more closely reflect the overall demographics of the student population. The problem is that there is a significant gap in academic performance between the demographics. Any attempt to make the magnets look like the overall population needs to stop looking at merit or lower the standard and make up other criteria which is what they did. This is an interesting problem. How do you increase participation in the magnets by URM students when you legally can't appear to be using racial assignments even though this your intent?

There were many better options that MCPS could have pursued:

1. Be honest about what you are doing. Implement universal testing and make the numbers public. Get rid of the special TP spots and increase overall # of spots to open up more seats. Provide extra points for students who are FARMS and minorities. This is legal and has been done in other school systems.

2. Expand the GT program to include the level 1 magnets for the very top performing students regardless of race or geographic location and position these in schools where high performing students are clustered. For all other schools provide a level 2 GT track that serves the 95%-97% students.

3. Create a URM GT track in ES that includes intensive summer and after school options to get more URM students up to the level of the white and asian kids in the west.

[Anonymous]

I'm getting really, really tired of the "MCPS is stealing my deserving kid's spot and giving it to an undeserving black/brown/poor kid with no-count parents!" thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm really bothered by the propaganda that deflects away from the fact that they changed the criteria not to get the most qualified students but to get the demographic profile of the students that they wanted. This is just wrong. Its been stated again and again that no one objects to universal testing, people object moving admission away from merit based and toward racial profiling. Yet again and again the MCPS PR booster will try to float in that the only change was universal testing. This simply isn't true and you should stop lying.

I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts. Their kid not being invited because she has a cohort Is just easier for parents to swallow than “they scored high, but not high enough”, which is what a lot of posted cogat results are showing. 99 percentile nationally but only 86th percentile MCPS? Universal testing is turning up more bright students.

If MCPS would just publish their accepted student Median score as they used to, people will believe you more on this. As it is all we hear is that the magnet program now has more diversity in abilities now. What conclusion should we make?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm getting really, really tired of the "MCPS is stealing my deserving kid's spot and giving it to an undeserving black/brown/poor kid with no-count parents!" thing.

Yet that exactly what they keep doing. Putting in diversity candidates with lower test scores. Opposite of merit based.

If MCPS wanted to shut everyone up, they’d released scrubbed data of who was accepted last year and this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm getting really, really tired of the "MCPS is stealing my deserving kid's spot and giving it to an undeserving black/brown/poor kid with no-count parents!" thing.

Yet that exactly what they keep doing. Putting in diversity candidates with lower test scores. Opposite of merit based.

If MCPS wanted to shut everyone up, they’d released scrubbed data of who was accepted last year and this year.

"Diversity candidates". Ugh. Please, just stop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I think the universal testing has affected the process more than the peer cohorts.

Except it didn't.

MCPS determined a % (95%) that it deemed highly capable and the universal testing revealed extremely large % of white students who met that criteria beyond the % that had applied in the past. If MCPS had selected from the larger group and offered seats to students who performed the highest out of the highly capable group they would have ended up with a magnet in a DCC school filled with white and asian kids primarily from the W schools.

The goal was to get the magnet demographic to more closely reflect the overall demographics of the student population. The problem is that there is a significant gap in academic performance between the demographics. Any attempt to make the magnets look like the overall population needs to stop looking at merit or lower the standard and make up other criteria which is what they did. This is an interesting problem. How do you increase participation in the magnets by URM students when you legally can't appear to be using racial assignments even though this your intent?

There were many better options that MCPS could have pursued:

1. Be honest about what you are doing. Implement universal testing and make the numbers public. Get rid of the special TP spots and increase overall # of spots to open up more seats. Provide extra points for students who are FARMS and minorities. This is legal and has been done in other school systems.

2. Expand the GT program to include the level 1 magnets for the very top performing students regardless of race or geographic location and position these in schools where high performing students are clustered. For all other schools provide a level 2 GT track that serves the 95%-97% students.

3. Create a URM GT track in ES that includes intensive summer and after school options to get more URM students up to the level of the white and asian kids in the west.

+1
Another option is that MCPS could have made students from the W schools (proxy for wealthy white/Asian schools) ineligible for the magnets since the peer group is presumably higher achieving.