Middle school magnet results?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is simply incapable of addressing the problem with limited seats in "magnet" programs when there are so many capable kids. The very fact that there are so few parents that turn down an invitation to TPMS or Eastern is all that one needs to see for evidence. MCPS lies through their teeth about enrichment at local MS when we can all see that they dont even offer computer science education at any local MS other than the magnets. If "magnets" cannot accommodate the highly capable kids, MCPS should just offer parents the option to drive their kids to the "W" feeder middle schools (where the affluence helps raise the bar) or time to start charters.

That isn't true. There are middle school computer science classes available as electives.

Wasn't there at my child's middle school. Can someone list the computer science electives available at their kids' non magnet middle school. I am curious.

Check out the course bulletin to see what is offered at other schools:
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/curriculum/middleschool/0446.22_2022-23_MS_CourseBulletin_FINAL.pdf
pages 17-19 include information about electives in Computer Science ~ Engineering ~ Technology Education

Here's a sample from 6th grade:
Coding and Game Development (ITC 2069)
Students will learn the elements of good game design and the different game genres as well as basic video game coding concepts including racing, platform, launching, and more. Students will apply computational thinking to their game designs. Students will be introduced to various programming languages.
Introduction to Technology & Engineering (ENR 1022)
Students will be introduced to technological systems and learn and apply the Engineering Design Process to a variety of challenges. Students are introduced to Computer Aided Design using TinkerCAD.
Engineering Design & Modeling (ENR 1023)
Students utilize the Engineering Design Process and technical skills of isometric sketching, multiview drawing, and Computer Aided Design using TinkerCAD to design solutions to engineering challenges.
Robotic Design 6 (ITC 2068)
Students will apply coding and programming skills and problem- solving to make physical models respond to commands. Students will collaborate, communicate, think computationally, program, debug and create models while learning to solve open-ended, real-life problems.

DP. The question, which you failed to answer, is which schools offered CS electives. Not every school does and clearly you don’t know which do.

I don't know an easy way to tell you which schools offer what, but my kid at Silver Creek took CS. I thought the specials offerings at SCMS were very mediocre, so I'm surprised to hear they offered something not offered at other schools.

And electives are quite different curriculum wise from the magnet computer science class.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/curriculum/specialprograms/middle/Takoma%20Park%20MS%20Magnet_web.pdf

relevant quote from the above document: "Only in the Takoma Park Middle School magnet program can sixth,
seventh, and eighth grade students get three full years of daily computer science
instruction."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DP. The question, which you failed to answer, is which schools offered CS electives. Not every school does and clearly you don’t know which do.

I don't know an easy way to tell you which schools offer what, but my kid at Silver Creek took CS. I thought the specials offerings at SCMS were very mediocre, so I'm surprised to hear they offered something not offered at other schools.

And electives are quite different curriculum wise from the magnet computer science class.
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/curriculum/specialprograms/middle/Takoma%20Park%20MS%20Magnet_web.pdf

relevant quote from the above document: "Only in the Takoma Park Middle School magnet program can sixth,
seventh, and eighth grade students get three full years of daily computer science
instruction."

Yes, both things are true. TPMS has its own required CS curriculum *and* other middle schools have CS electives.

[Anonymous]

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you


Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

It's still early in Jan. And there was a snowstorm last week. Breathe, your kid will be fine at ANY middle school, I promise.


NP and could you possibly be more patronizing? You actually know nothing about OP or their kid or their home middle school.

Oh, so sorry. You're right. OP, you child is doomed to a life of failure if they aren't selected by a lottery process for a middle school magnet program. In fact just today I threw away the resumes of candidates who obviously had not attended magnet middle schools.

This poster has every right to complain about the system that doesn’t address the needs of the smartest, highest scoring kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

85% of the average NBA player height is still 5 foot 6 inches... and as was illustrated before there is a notable collection of ELITE players at that height.... And with the very tallest NBA players well over 7 foot (the actual 99% in this analogy) your numbers are less and less convincing.

You can keep insisting that someone at 85% of the average NBA player height cannot be AS GOOD - but you are demonstrably wrong.

And BTW - nobody lowers the nets or made the courts smaller to accommodate these players. Just like nobody "waters down" the magnet material to accommodate the lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

85% of the average NBA player height is still 5 foot 6 inches... and as was illustrated before there is a notable collection of ELITE players at that height.... And with the very tallest NBA players well over 7 foot (the actual 99% in this analogy) your numbers are less and less convincing.

You can keep insisting that someone at 85% of the average NBA player height cannot be AS GOOD - but you are demonstrably wrong.

And BTW - nobody lowers the nets or made the courts smaller to accommodate these players. Just like nobody "waters down" the magnet material to accommodate the lottery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet
Muggsy Boges was 5'3" and played over 10 years in the NBA. Spud Webb was 5'7" and won the NBA dunk contest.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

85% of the average NBA player height is still 5 foot 6 inches... and as was illustrated before there is a notable collection of ELITE players at that height.... And with the very tallest NBA players well over 7 foot (the actual 99% in this analogy) your numbers are less and less convincing.

You can keep insisting that someone at 85% of the average NBA player height cannot be AS GOOD - but you are demonstrably wrong.

And BTW - nobody lowers the nets or made the courts smaller to accommodate these players. Just like nobody "waters down" the magnet material to accommodate the lottery.


Notable is not statistically significant. Just give up this argument. It is a losing one for you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

Muggsy Boges was 5'3" and played over 10 years in the NBA. Spud Webb was 5'7" and won the NBA dunk contest.

Naming even 20 notable short players among thousands of NBA players doesn't make your case. Math is not your strong suit for sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

Muggsy Boges was 5'3" and played over 10 years in the NBA. Spud Webb was 5'7" and won the NBA dunk contest.

Naming even 20 notable short players among thousands of NBA players doesn't make your case. Math is not your strong suit for sure.

Bayes Theoram... the math works until you come across someone that refuses to even consider new information.

That someone, this evening, is you.

FACT: Being in the 99th percentile of height does not make you an ELITE basketball player.

FACT: Scoring in the 99th percentile of the CoGAT does not make you an ELITE student.

There are a LOT of tall people that can't perform at that level. And there are a LOT of 99th percentile students that can't perform in a magnet.

And there are a LOT of people "short" on those measures that can perform.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

There are roughly 2.4 million men in the United States 6 foot 4 or taller.
There are roughly 500 professional basketball players in the NBA

Using height as shorthand for ability to perform at the elite level would be foolishness... as would using a CoGAT score as shorthand for who would be best suited for a magnet program.

There is a LOT more to recruiting than just one or two descriptive statistics

Fixed it for you

Yes... but the player who is 5 foot 1 inch is not NBA material. Just as the 85% kid is NOT AS GOOD as the 99% kid. And this is not using just COGAT. Use a composite score. That's fine...MAP + COGAT + School grades. Anything but a lottery. And yes, my kid is in a magnet and had 99% scores in MAP and COGAT and straight A's and did not go to Dr Li.... and is thriving in their magnet

Muggsy Boges was 5'3" and played over 10 years in the NBA. Spud Webb was 5'7" and won the NBA dunk contest.

Naming even 20 notable short players among thousands of NBA players doesn't make your case. Math is not your strong suit for sure.

Bayes Theoram... the math works until you come across someone that refuses to even consider new information.

That someone, this evening, is you.

FACT: Being in the 99th percentile of height does not make you an ELITE basketball player.

FACT: Scoring in the 99th percentile of the CoGAT does not make you an ELITE student.

There are a LOT of tall people that can't perform at that level. And there are a LOT of 99th percentile students that can't perform in a magnet.

And there are a LOT of people "short" on those measures that can perform.

Some people are just so invested in the superiority of a test.

And yet they keep telling us not to teach to the test.

[Anonymous]

My child did not attend a magnet middle school and is still the magnet IB. It's challenging and they're doing well. Having seen them go to TPMS as a non-magnet student, however, I have to say I'm not very impressed with the rigor of those classes, and I'm more than a little pissed off at what my child missed out on.

(We moved to the state too late to apply to the magnet program. It's a one and done: move in December after the cut-off? You're out.)

Example: science class, 7th grade. One homework assignment was a word finder where my child had to circle words like homestasis in a grid of letters. That was the entire assignment. They did not learn definitions for these words. Just had to circle them.

Another example: English class, 6th grade. They read the Rats if Nimh. My child read this book in third grade in DCPS.

There was a fair amount of homework, in fact, but most of it was inspired, rote, and bored my child to tears.

From what I've heard, instruction in non-magnet middle schools for advanced kids is much better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child did not attend a magnet middle school and is still the magnet IB. It's challenging and they're doing well. Having seen them go to TPMS as a non-magnet student, however, I have to say I'm not very impressed with the rigor of those classes, and I'm more than a little pissed off at what my child missed out on.

(We moved to the state too late to apply to the magnet program. It's a one and done: move in December after the cut-off? You're out.)

Example: science class, 7th grade. One homework assignment was a word finder where my child had to circle words like homestasis in a grid of letters. That was the entire assignment. They did not learn definitions for these words. Just had to circle them.

Another example: English class, 6th grade. They read the Rats if Nimh. My child read this book in third grade in DCPS.

There was a fair amount of homework, in fact, but most of it was inspired, rote, and bored my child to tears.

From what I've heard, instruction in non-magnet middle schools for advanced kids is much better.

It's not.

The TPMS magnet kids were in your kid's English class, so their English instruction wasn't any better, either.

[Anonymous]

My oldest started Kindergarten in MCPS in 2004. There has always been more demand for these gifted/enriched magnets than spots.

If I had a magic wand:

1. Offer magnet math, magnet social studies, and magnet English at all middle schools. If there are is no cohort, kids can go to another school. Our MS curriculum is terrible. The majority of families would be happy in home MSs with a more rigorous curriculum.

2. Expand the number of seats in middle school magnet programs by adding more locations, like they have expanded the test-in HS magnet programs. With these expanded seats they can let in all the outliers (98%+ on cogat or map or whatever) and then do a lottery for everyone that is between 98% and 85% to fill the remainder of the spots. We have a ton of highly able students in this county. Let's make the pie bigger.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My oldest started Kindergarten in MCPS in 2004. There has always been more demand for these gifted/enriched magnets than spots.

If I had a magic wand:

1. Offer magnet math, magnet social studies, and magnet English at all middle schools. If there are is no cohort, kids can go to another school. Our MS curriculum is terrible. The majority of families would be happy in home MSs with a more rigorous curriculum.

2. Expand the number of seats in middle school magnet programs by adding more locations, like they have expanded the test-in HS magnet programs. With these expanded seats they can let in all the outliers (98%+ on cogat or map or whatever) and then do a lottery for everyone that is between 98% and 85% to fill the remainder of the spots. We have a ton of highly able students in this county. Let's make the pie bigger.

You are actually drawing lines between kids who scored 98 and 99 percent?

THIS EXAM IS ONE MOMENT FROM ONE DAY OF THEIR LIVES.