Magnet Middle School Thread: MAP scores and results

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Decision would be easy for me.

High performers with 99th percentile IQ type scores (if you know) plus coming from a high performing school. Not worth it this year. You'd be better off at your home school with the other high performers who would have gotten in in previous years.

If you have a child who is a lower performer and got lucky in the lottery and your child is in a lower performing school you may want to consider.

Sounds like your child wasn't selected and trying to get off the WL. Magnet programs speak for themselves. Begone, sour grapes!

Nice try. DC is in magnet now in 8th. Not worth it for this year's cohort coming from a school with a good peer group.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That makes no sense. You're talking about an entire program filled with top students from around the county vs. a home middle school classroom filled with a range of abilities, even in advance classes. There's no comparison. In addition, the lottery system will ensure there are fewer kids in the magnet that are prepped in outside classes who are overly competitive about grades and scores. That's the kind of cohort that I want my DC to be a part of.

You don't seem to understand. A school like Frost to use an example from the other thread might have several dozen kids who are highly able with all around high scores in the 99th or close to it percentile.

Only 1-3 will probably be at one of the magnets if probability holds they will be anywhere from 95-99th percentile. So the group left at Frost is likely more high scoring than those at the magnets. Throw in the commute and the social aspect of leaving friends and I could see how a family might choose to stay at the home school. Unless your child is unhappy at the neighborhood school due to lack of friends or is really obsessed with certain topics over others it makes a lot of sense to stay put. The kids in DC's magnet program seem pretty socially awkward and the parents say it's a reason they chose the magnet.

No, you really don't get it. The elementary schools that feed into Frost have big groups of students that go to weekly outside math classes. Some of those afterschool programs boast that they get a quarter of their kids into CES programs. Of course that kind of regular exposure to higher math year after year is going to create a glut of artificially inflated 99% Math-M scores (artificial because they're essentially taking a second math class). It's also going to create kids who are overly concerned about grades and scores and unduely competitive with each other (poor three-quarters who didn't make it to the CES despite attending the same classes!). The magnets should capture students with potential, not prepping, and then provide them with the resources - strong teachers, innovative curriculum, high standards, and challenging projects - to bring out their best. I guarantee DC would be much happier with the top 5% of students across the county showing potential than the 1% prepped in so-and-so's class and similar. The lottery helps weed out the preppers. Thank goodness for that.

I think you made this up. We are in one of those elem that feed to Frost. I don’t know anyone who did prep in elementary school. I can guarantee you my child did no prep and she was selected for the magnet. This sounds like a bunch of assumptions on your part.

+1 Lots of crazy magnet posters on these threads. Kids can prep all they want but those aren't necessarily the ones that get in. A number of kids at our elementary school are open about supplementing/enriching in academic subjects because it is not a shameful thing but just what their parents choose to have the kids spend their time on. I don't call it prepping and no one thinks of it as that. They did not get in to the magnets. The kids selected are ones that do not attend those classes. One is just a regular girl who draws a lot and goes on bike rides with her friends in the neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

1. The culture of prepping is what creates the unusually high numbers of 99%ers at Frost elems.

2. More preppers got into magnets in previous years. Fewer, hopefully many fewer, are getting in under the lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1. The culture of prepping is what creates the unusually high numbers of 99%ers at Frost elems.

2. More preppers got into magnets in previous years. Fewer, hopefully many fewer, are getting in under the lottery.

Do you live in a Frost elem feeder? I do and just don’t see people prepping. I think you want to believe we’re all rich and sitting around prepping our kids, but that’s really not the case.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. The culture of prepping is what creates the unusually high numbers of 99%ers at Frost elems.

2. More preppers got into magnets in previous years. Fewer, hopefully many fewer, are getting in under the lottery.

Do you live in a Frost elem feeder? I do and just don’t see people prepping. I think you want to believe we’re all rich and sitting around prepping our kids, but that’s really not the case.

To add to that, I don’t even know how you could prep for the Humanities magnet.

[Anonymous]

Granted, prepping for humanities is harder.
That's why I focused on math, which is more straightforward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. The culture of prepping is what creates the unusually high numbers of 99%ers at Frost elems.

2. More preppers got into magnets in previous years. Fewer, hopefully many fewer, are getting in under the lottery.

Do you live in a Frost elem feeder? I do and just don’t see people prepping. I think you want to believe we’re all rich and sitting around prepping our kids, but that’s really not the case.

No the culture of hard work, value in education, and parents who are involved is what makes those numbers the way they are. WTF really

[Anonymous]

🙄

[Anonymous]

However you want to put it Frost is the best MS in MCPS in terms of overall student performance. You don’t have to care about it but nothing you say will change that.

[Anonymous]

I guarantee most people looking in from the outside don't see those afterschool cram programs and Saturday classes as "culture of hard work" and "value in education." They see it for what it is. Plain ol' prepping.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That makes no sense. You're talking about an entire program filled with top students from around the county vs. a home middle school classroom filled with a range of abilities, even in advance classes. There's no comparison. In addition, the lottery system will ensure there are fewer kids in the magnet that are prepped in outside classes who are overly competitive about grades and scores. That's the kind of cohort that I want my DC to be a part of.

You don't seem to understand. A school like Frost to use an example from the other thread might have several dozen kids who are highly able with all around high scores in the 99th or close to it percentile.

Only 1-3 will probably be at one of the magnets if probability holds they will be anywhere from 95-99th percentile. So the group left at Frost is likely more high scoring than those at the magnets. Throw in the commute and the social aspect of leaving friends and I could see how a family might choose to stay at the home school. Unless your child is unhappy at the neighborhood school due to lack of friends or is really obsessed with certain topics over others it makes a lot of sense to stay put. The kids in DC's magnet program seem pretty socially awkward and the parents say it's a reason they chose the magnet.

Especially this since those selected for the magnets were not the highest scoring but a random selection of bright kids. It stands to reason that fewer outliers were selected this year because of the lottery so there may be a stronger cohort at their home school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:However you want to put it Frost is the best MS in MCPS in terms of overall student performance. You don’t have to care about it but nothing you say will change that.

No not really, but thanks to its gerrymandered boundary it has fewer economically disadvantaged students bringing its test average down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have any data or numbers to help understand this better?

The only numbers that I know is that the upcounty MS magnets have 50 seats each, so 100 seats total upcounty.

I would greatly appreciate if anyone could help provide the following data:

- How many downcounty magnet seats at Eastern and TPMS?
- How many selected in pools for lottery?
- How many total 6th Graders?

This would just help me to better understand and contextualize what is going on here. Thanks in advance!
-

Bump

Eastern - 100

TPMS - 120, of which 20 seats go to kids who are in-bounds for TPMS

MCPS has not released the number of kids who were in-pool this year

There are roughly 7000 5th graders district-wide this year. If we assume up-county and down-county are roughly equal, that's 3500 kids

Where do you get that number? There were 11000 fifth graders last year. I can't imagine it's dropped that much.

It dropped about 1% according to the county. They're numbers are significantly off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Decision would be easy for me.

High performers with 99th percentile IQ type scores (if you know) plus coming from a high performing school. Not worth it this year. You'd be better off at your home school with the other high performers who would have gotten in in previous years.

If you have a child who is a lower performer and got lucky in the lottery and your child is in a lower performing school you may want to consider.

Sounds like your child wasn't selected and trying to get off the WL. Magnet programs speak for themselves. Begone, sour grapes!

Nice try. DC is in magnet now in 8th. Not worth it for this year's cohort coming from a school with a good peer group.

It seems like any kid with decent grades and 240/235 MAP-M/MAP-R respectively made the pool, but since selection wasn't based on scores this year fewer outliers will end up in these programs. Sure, these are great programs but it isn't going to be the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:However you want to put it Frost is the best MS in MCPS in terms of overall student performance. You don’t have to care about it but nothing you say will change that.

No not really, but thanks to its gerrymandered boundary it has fewer economically disadvantaged students bringing its test average down.

+1000