Does anyone have info about Newport Mill MS' "parent revolt"?
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Anonymous
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I have heard that a large group of parents from this MS are demanding an immediate meeting with Dr. Starr so that he can address serious issues in their school: lack of rigor due to the philosophy that "all our kids take advanced level classes"/i.e. no differentiation, and lack of attention to safety issues.
I know I read about it somewhere but now I can't find the reference. Does anyone have more details about this? |
Anonymous
Anonymous
| The Spring of discontent: an education uprising in Montgomery County. Does MCPS have a finger on the pulse of its constituents? |
Anonymous
How representative is Newport Mill as far as the lack of differentiation is concerned? Isn't this fairly common? DC is still in elementary school but from what I hear (and I know this is anecdotal) most of the kids in our neighborhood are in "advanced" classes. This is often presented as evidence that the (green zone) middle school is rigorous but if nearly everyone takes advanced classes, they can't be rigorous because the teacher has too many ability groups to teach effectively. Our middle school used to have a GT track but I believe this has been phased out with the middle school reform changes. |
Anonymous
| Newport Mill is in the red zone, fyi. Part of the issue there is that everyone is taught at the advanced level and the kids who can't handle the material are disruptive to the class. |
Anonymous
red zone? |
Anonymous
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This is also true at Neelsville MS. All kids are put into Advanced English classes for 6th, 7th and 8th grade. (Except if you score high enough on the MSA then you can skip 6th grade English and take a foreign language instead) That is the only English class offered for all the grade levels.
How is this beneficial and just what does "advanced" mean in an instance like this that this is the only class offered? Then, as I understand it, in the 8th grade, if the grade you recieve doesn't pass a certain threshold then your transcripts to High School will not say that you took Advanced English but just plain old English. Someone will have to explain the benefits of this to me as I can't understand why this makes good sense. Is this just a way for MCPS to manipulate that fact that they are closing the achievement gap because all students are taking "Advanced" classes? How is the classroom differentiated, or is it? |
Anonymous
| 35 parents is not all that many. |
Anonymous
It is enough to get a conversation going! |
Anonymous
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My child graduated from Newport several years ago. The "everyone's advanced" program began about four or five years ago, soon after the vice principal Penny Tsonis was promoted to principal after the very competent principal Nelson McLeod moved on to Richard Montgomery. We had a completely negative experience with Tsonis, although some of the teachers were good. She was uncommunicative and unhelpful in almost all my encounters with her.
As for safety, there were a number of fights, including one in which a girl attacked my child and tried to choke him. The girl was suspended, but the school didn't let me know until the next day. The advanced English was too easy but the science was over my son's head. |
Anonymous
Of MS aged kids, at a public school, at a voluntary meeting ... yes, that actually is quite a lot. |
Anonymous
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60 attended the meeting. An outside moderator was there to get feedback from parents because of the lack of response from the administration. The moderators thought they had time to get feedback, assess things, etc. but did not understand that the meeting was the result of parent feedback and a long battle to get some type of results. The next step is a meeting in July and a subset of parents (the 35) signed on to a letter because they wanted to see some action taken by July, not just another meeting. I can understand the rush if they have children attending the next year.
The feeder schools are good (OTES and Woodlin) and I had heard pretty good things about Newport. Glad to see parent involvement and hope things can get back on track. |
Anonymous
The county is divided into the red and green zones for schools. Red zone schools are historically underachieving, have high poverty rates, higher student mobility, and high numbers of ELL students. In MoCo, it breaks down into pretty geographically distinct regions, and under Jerry Weast they were named the red zone and green zone to provide differentiated treatment and funding. Red zone schools get more money, more supports, more federal funding, etc. to try and bring student performance up to those in green zone schools. A lot of that funding, however, has been cut during this recession. http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/leadingforequity/pdf/HarvardCase-DifferientiatedTreatment.pdf |
Anonymous
| The parents leading this push must continue. Other NMMS parents must get involved immediately. Certain members of leadership made a bad curriculum decision and then expected teachers to "make it work" without proper resources, training, or modeling. As a former NMMS teacher, I can say that blanket advanced curriculum is not working at the school. Hopefully the parents will be heard and taken seriously because staff was feeback and opinion was routinely ignored regarding this matter. |
Anonymous
| Woodlin does not feed into Newport. It feeds into Sligo. |