Takoma, Easter Magnets. MCPS Pilots Universal Evaluation Process.

[Anonymous]

I imagine many parents have less of an incentive to bus their children across the county when now there's enriched classes at their home school.

Doubt it. Busing your kid all the way across the county is a serious commitment. I can't even imagine getting my middle schooler to a bus stop around 6:15 am. Most parents further out won't even consider it. I don't think the parents and kids who want and deserve to be in the magnet are consoled with the token "enriched" class.

[Anonymous]

Question for the poster who posted the spreadsheet with the numbers of kids classified as highly able. Do you know what the criteria was for being classified as highly able?

MCPS must have had a set of quantitative criteria for categorizing this many students. Too many for them to weed through kid by kid. I'd suspect that the classification "highly able" is much broader than people expect. It makes no sense that schools like Pyle and Frost were blocked but schools with an equal peer cohort of highly able students like SSIM and Sligo were not unless the kids at Frost/Pyle were mostly at the upper end of the highly able group and SSIM was at the lower end.

MCPS must have had some way of ranking students to select the "outliers", I don't understand why they just can't be transparent about what they did. MCPS is not a private company. Its a public school system and it owes the citizens who govern it transparency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for the poster who posted the spreadsheet with the numbers of kids classified as highly able. Do you know what the criteria was for being classified as highly able?

MCPS must have had a set of quantitative criteria for categorizing this many students. Too many for them to weed through kid by kid. I'd suspect that the classification "highly able" is much broader than people expect. It makes no sense that schools like Pyle and Frost were blocked but schools with an equal peer cohort of highly able students like SSIM and Sligo were not unless the kids at Frost/Pyle were mostly at the upper end of the highly able group and SSIM was at the lower end.

MCPS must have had some way of ranking students to select the "outliers", I don't understand why they just can't be transparent about what they did. MCPS is not a private company. Its a public school system and it owes the citizens who govern it transparency.

They have been transparent about what they did. "Transparent" doesn't mean "tell me everything I want to know", although people often use it that way. "Transparent" also doesn't mean "I don't like the outcome, so I will criticize the process for not being transparent".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for the poster who posted the spreadsheet with the numbers of kids classified as highly able. Do you know what the criteria was for being classified as highly able?

MCPS must have had a set of quantitative criteria for categorizing this many students. Too many for them to weed through kid by kid. I'd suspect that the classification "highly able" is much broader than people expect. It makes no sense that schools like Pyle and Frost were blocked but schools with an equal peer cohort of highly able students like SSIM and Sligo were not unless the kids at Frost/Pyle were mostly at the upper end of the highly able group and SSIM was at the lower end.

MCPS must have had some way of ranking students to select the "outliers", I don't understand why they just can't be transparent about what they did. MCPS is not a private company. Its a public school system and it owes the citizens who govern it transparency.

The kids that feed into the HGCs that are in SSIMS and Sligo were "blocked" just like the Pyle and Frost kids. Very few kids got an offer from Pine Crest or Oak View. Only 28 kids from all of the centers/HGCs were offered spots. Why do you think only Pyle and Frost were blocked? I think you are making this assumption because the majority of students magnet students historically came from Pyle in Frost in the past. Yes, but SSIMS and Sligo didn't win the magnet lottery this year. What MCPS did was spread the wealth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I imagine many parents have less of an incentive to bus their children across the county when now there's enriched classes at their home school.

Doubt it. Busing your kid all the way across the county is a serious commitment. I can't even imagine getting my middle schooler to a bus stop around 6:15 am. Most parents further out won't even consider it. I don't think the parents and kids who want and deserve to be in the magnet are consoled with the token "enriched" class.

At least those kids have a large enough peer group for an enriched class. Do you think the students who are the one or two outliers at their school should be consoled with nothing?

[Anonymous]

They have been transparent about what they did

I just spit out my coffee. They haven't been transparent at all! Good grief!

They are withholding data that they have released in past years. They are not sharing the quantitative method and quantitative criteria for how they identified highly able. They are not sharing how they ranked within the highly able category. They are not showing whether to get in from school A a student needed to be 99.999 and school B a student a student needed to be 94 and what drove the distinctions between the schools.

This is all data that they have. There is zero reason not to share it unless they know it gets them in trouble legally -which is probably does.

[Anonymous]

viola peanut butter sandwiches!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

They have been transparent about what they did

I just spit out my coffee. They haven't been transparent at all! Good grief!

They are withholding data that they have released in past years. They are not sharing the quantitative method and quantitative criteria for how they identified highly able. They are not sharing how they ranked within the highly able category. They are not showing whether to get in from school A a student needed to be 99.999 and school B a student a student needed to be 94 and what drove the distinctions between the schools.

This is all data that they have. There is zero reason not to share it unless they know it gets them in trouble legally -which is probably does.

Evidently you're one of the people who believes it's not transparency until they've told you everything you want to know.

[Anonymous]

Evidently you're one of the people who believes it's not transparency until they've told you everything you want to know.

Why do you feel so passionately about withholding public information from the public? If you don't want to look at the data and facts, then fine. You are free to put your head back in the sand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Evidently you're one of the people who believes it's not transparency until they've told you everything you want to know.

Why do you feel so passionately about withholding public information from the public? If you don't want to look at the data and facts, then fine. You are free to put your head back in the sand.

If MCPS wants to release information, that's fine. If you want to ask MCPS for the information, that's fine. But you're not entitled to the information. And the idea that MCPS must be doing something illegal, because otherwise they'd release all of the information you want -- that's just silly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Question for the poster who posted the spreadsheet with the numbers of kids classified as highly able. Do you know what the criteria was for being classified as highly able?

MCPS must have had a set of quantitative criteria for categorizing this many students. Too many for them to weed through kid by kid. I'd suspect that the classification "highly able" is much broader than people expect. It makes no sense that schools like Pyle and Frost were blocked but schools with an equal peer cohort of highly able students like SSIM and Sligo were not unless the kids at Frost/Pyle were mostly at the upper end of the highly able group and SSIM was at the lower end.

MCPS must have had some way of ranking students to select the "outliers", I don't understand why they just can't be transparent about what they did. MCPS is not a private company. Its a public school system and it owes the citizens who govern it transparency.

I posted it and what it shows is that the five middle school clusters with the largest number of "qualified" students are Frost, Hoover, SSIMs, Pyle and Sligo. I noted that we have heard from parents and from reputable sources such as MCCPTA that the CESs feeding these five clusters have seen the biggest drop in admits to the magnet middle schools. Only 25% of the kids admitted to the middle school magnets will come from a CES and the CESs with the most high performing students had the worst outcomes, so only a couple of kids from each of the CESs with the most high performing students (Cold Spring/Oakview/Pinecrest) were able to secure spots.
It really looks like MCPS used their peer cohort filter in a ham handed way. If you happened to attend a school in a high performing middle school cluster you were less likely to receive a spot which means that there will be large numbers of highly gifted kids in home middle schools who will get just one enriched humanities course instead of 3 or 4 magnet courses at Eastern/ 1 enriched Math course instead of 3 magnet STEM courses at TPMS

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I posted it and what it shows is that the five middle school clusters with the largest number of "qualified" students are Frost, Hoover, SSIMs, Pyle and Sligo. I noted that we have heard from parents and from reputable sources such as MCCPTA that the CESs feeding these five clusters have seen the biggest drop in admits to the magnet middle schools. Only 25% of the kids admitted to the middle school magnets will come from a CES and the CESs with the most high performing students had the worst outcomes, so only a couple of kids from each of the CESs with the most high performing students (Cold Spring/Oakview/Pinecrest) were able to secure spots.
It really looks like MCPS used their peer cohort filter in a ham handed way. If you happened to attend a school in a high performing middle school cluster you were less likely to receive a spot which means that there will be large numbers of highly gifted kids in home middle schools who will get just one enriched humanities course instead of 3 or 4 magnet courses at Eastern/ 1 enriched Math course instead of 3 magnet STEM courses at TPMS

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf

Or, more accurately, they will get one magnet humanities course AND one magnet math course (for a total of 2 magnet courses), in their home school, instead of three magnet humanities courses OR three magnet math/science courses (for a total of 3 magnet courses) at a magnet school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I posted it and what it shows is that the five middle school clusters with the largest number of "qualified" students are Frost, Hoover, SSIMs, Pyle and Sligo. I noted that we have heard from parents and from reputable sources such as MCCPTA that the CESs feeding these five clusters have seen the biggest drop in admits to the magnet middle schools. Only 25% of the kids admitted to the middle school magnets will come from a CES and the CESs with the most high performing students had the worst outcomes, so only a couple of kids from each of the CESs with the most high performing students (Cold Spring/Oakview/Pinecrest) were able to secure spots.
It really looks like MCPS used their peer cohort filter in a ham handed way. If you happened to attend a school in a high performing middle school cluster you were less likely to receive a spot which means that there will be large numbers of highly gifted kids in home middle schools who will get just one enriched humanities course instead of 3 or 4 magnet courses at Eastern/ 1 enriched Math course instead of 3 magnet STEM courses at TPMS

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf

Or, more accurately, they will get one magnet humanities course AND one magnet math course (for a total of 2 magnet courses), in their home school, instead of three magnet humanities courses OR three magnet math/science courses (for a total of 3 magnet courses) at a magnet school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I posted it and what it shows is that the five middle school clusters with the largest number of "qualified" students are Frost, Hoover, SSIMs, Pyle and Sligo. I noted that we have heard from parents and from reputable sources such as MCCPTA that the CESs feeding these five clusters have seen the biggest drop in admits to the magnet middle schools. Only 25% of the kids admitted to the middle school magnets will come from a CES and the CESs with the most high performing students had the worst outcomes, so only a couple of kids from each of the CESs with the most high performing students (Cold Spring/Oakview/Pinecrest) were able to secure spots.
It really looks like MCPS used their peer cohort filter in a ham handed way. If you happened to attend a school in a high performing middle school cluster you were less likely to receive a spot which means that there will be large numbers of highly gifted kids in home middle schools who will get just one enriched humanities course instead of 3 or 4 magnet courses at Eastern/ 1 enriched Math course instead of 3 magnet STEM courses at TPMS

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf

Or, more accurately, they will get one magnet humanities course AND one magnet math course (for a total of 2 magnet courses), in their home school, instead of three magnet humanities courses OR three magnet math/science courses (for a total of 3 magnet courses) at a magnet school.

In the magnet program with three or four interrelated courses and a cohort drawn from 16 high school clusters, the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Question for the poster who posted the spreadsheet with the numbers of kids classified as highly able. Do you know what the criteria was for being classified as highly able?

MCPS must have had a set of quantitative criteria for categorizing this many students. Too many for them to weed through kid by kid. I'd suspect that the classification "highly able" is much broader than people expect. It makes no sense that schools like Pyle and Frost were blocked but schools with an equal peer cohort of highly able students like SSIM and Sligo were not unless the kids at Frost/Pyle were mostly at the upper end of the highly able group and SSIM was at the lower end.

MCPS must have had some way of ranking students to select the "outliers", I don't understand why they just can't be transparent about what they did. MCPS is not a private company. Its a public school system and it owes the citizens who govern it transparency.

I posted it and what it shows is that the five middle school clusters with the largest number of "qualified" students are Frost, Hoover, SSIMs, Pyle and Sligo. I noted that we have heard from parents and from reputable sources such as MCCPTA that the CESs feeding these five clusters have seen the biggest drop in admits to the magnet middle schools. Only 25% of the kids admitted to the middle school magnets will come from a CES and the CESs with the most high performing students had the worst outcomes, so only a couple of kids from each of the CESs with the most high performing students (Cold Spring/Oakview/Pinecrest) were able to secure spots.
It really looks like MCPS used their peer cohort filter in a ham handed way. If you happened to attend a school in a high performing middle school cluster you were less likely to receive a spot which means that there will be large numbers of highly gifted kids in home middle schools who will get just one enriched humanities course instead of 3 or 4 magnet courses at Eastern/ 1 enriched Math course instead of 3 magnet STEM courses at TPMS

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf

I think there was clearly an issue this year, as Pine Crest and Oak View also include kids who should be benefiting from the 25 set-aside seats at TPMS, but even those kids were less likely to get into the program than in years past.