interesting discussion regarding abysmal decline of MoCo schools
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Anonymous
what do you expect? The excuse? Did you ever stop to think that maybe there are kids with more needs in your kid's class(es)? The teachers have to teach the class then they have to do the extra support for all the kids with IEPs in their class. |
Anonymous
Yes, they are supposed to give the extra support to ALL the kids with IEPs. And, could be a new teacher that doesn't know how; could be an old teacher who doesn't believe IEPs are real; could be a long-term sub, who doesn't know the law, doesn't understand what they are supposed to do and are completely overwhelmed. Or some other reason. |
Anonymous
When there are significant concerns and they wrote the iep and refused our input or our private therapists as they knew best, yes I expect them to. I should not have to remove my child early from school or being them late for therapies and academic support. |
Anonymous
This, when you change the ingredients you will get a different baked good. MoCo will not mirror its past because the students don’t mirror its past. It is still doing a good job with where the kids are. In the small handful of schools that have the old school SES mixture are still at the top of the pile statewide. |
Anonymous
That’s not true. John R Lewis High School (formerly Robert E Lee) in FCPS is a very poor performing school and they probably have more poor Pakistani, Afghan, Arab, and Indian immigrants than any other school in the region does. Poverty is a huge indicator. |
Anonymous
I’ll bet they outperform the Baltimore schools though. Generally poor Asian kids do pretty well. The test in NYC schools are chock full of poor Asian kids. |
Anonymous
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I have worked for MCPS for a long time. I don't think MCPS has changed, but our county demographics certainly have changed. We have more newcomers with limited to no English language. We have much higher rates of poverty and trauma. Parents who are struggling to keep roofs over their heads, substance abuse, domestic violence, etc. All of these societal problems are spilling into our school buildings and quite frankly, staff are overwhelmed. It's very, very challenging to try and teach or run a building when you have a few kids in each grade-level who are consistently occupying 95% of your bandwidth. These kids didn't ask to be born into crappy conditions but they're in our schools and are having a really tough time despite the best efforts by staff to support their SEL needs.
We have to be honest with ourselves - until the parents (society) gets in a better place, we're going to continue to see the effects in our buildings. The curriculum standards have become harder with CCSS but we've lowered our expectations. Students know that there aren't any real consequences. We don't suspend students because of the school to prison pipeline. Trust me when I tell you, there are kids I would have advocated for suspension years ago but now knowing what they'd do at home, I'd rather them be safe and fed in our building. Admin are basically spending any free moment covering duties, dealing with behavior issues, etc. This gets in the way of them being able to get into classrooms to observe actual teaching and instruction. Personally, I'm tired of schools and MCPS being blamed for all of the problems that we've created as a society. We aren't private schools - we take whoever comes to enroll and we do the best that we can with limited staff and training in trauma-informed practices. |
Anonymous
With the proliferation of this private diagnosis especially in the UMC schools that provide unlimited time on tests like SATs, there just isn't money to accommodate everyone these days and with the changes in demographics from mass immigration MCPS seems different today than 30 years ago.. However, anyone, who wants a great education it's as good as ever. Test averages may be a little different but the same opportunities exist. |
Anonymous
NP without direct experience so forgive me if this is a dumb question but why don’t they specify that one school is basically for the kids who are real problems, just as a daycare to keep them fed and off the streets and out of prison like you said, and then leave the other schools for the kids who want to learn or at least whose parents want them to learn? I imagine that most of these kids people are talking about aren’t the ones with official diagnoses who are protected right? Then one school in every city could be a write off but the rest could go back to actual education. |
Anonymous
Yes, but since there are 3X more kids with these IEPs today than a decade ago and funding has remained constant there is only so much to go around. In our W feeder something like 80% of the kids require this extra support. In fact, if you don't have an IEP you are basically ignored today. |
Anonymous
This! IEP/504 plan numbers have gone up, and the number of people becoming teachers and specialist who work in school has gone down. Further, teacher education programs have not changed enough to provide their students with all the skills they need to be equipped for working in a classroom by themselves. |
Anonymous
Someone is definitely deleting posts critical of MCPS. It may not be an MCPS employee, but a contractor? DCUMS? Does MCPS pay any ad revenue or have a reviewer on DCUMS? |
Anonymous
 At least four out of every five posts on this forum are critical of MCPS. Including this thread right here.
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Anonymous
The irony is lost on some posters. |
Anonymous
Maybe in the W schools, but you all are special. My kid had serious delays and NEEDED support. Thankfully our insurance covered therapies but the consequence was my child also missed a lot of school because of it. Insurance doesn't pay if your kid doesn't NEED it. |