Educational Inequities in MCPS

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thinking outside the box here:

I’m a product of one of the high FARMS schools from the 1980’s during a unique time in MCPS history. I was part of the pilot program for honors and later AP classes. I was in a group of 30 students from 7th-12th grade. Of my cohort from this experiment, many of us were the first generation of our families to go to college. Many of us not only earned Bachelor’s degrees, we also earned Graduate degrees.

Looking back, what were the things that helped:

1) small class sizes - in a small class, everyone was expected to participate and the teacher was available to answer questions and provide feedback

2) encouragement for students to attend office hours and create study groups - I had the same group of students for core subject areas so we really bonded and supported one another as the curriculum got harder

3) free SAT prep by AP English teacher and AP Calculus teacher during lunch - I’m not sure if they gave us the help altruistictically or if they were compensated but after school many of us had jobs or extracurricular activities so lunch sessions were ideal. My parents wouldn’t been able to afford a private SAT class.

4) high expectations to remain in the program - we had to achieve high achievement test scores to be in the program and had to get As and Bs to continue.

5) internal drive - my parents couldn’t help me with most of my homework past 7th grade. I think the biggest factor was my own drive to succeed. I wanted a better life and better job opportunities than my parents. I understood (like my cohorts) that education was the key to a better life.

6) when you have a classroom where students are focused on learning, there are no discipline problems - our classes was a school within a school. For core classes, it was the same 20-25 students. The rest of the school was like general population where chaos ruled. I actually had to drop an elective once because of the teacher screaming and kids misbehaving to the point it was too stressful. It’s hard to learn in chaos.

How did you end up in this pilot program? Was your name randomly selected or were you chosen / referred to the program by a teacher who saw your potential? The problem with alot of your points is that many of those things have and are being tried in certain schools but they're not working. It could be that the program worked well for motivated students but not so well for all students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fix the root of the problem. Bussing kids around to inflate test scores does not work. Universal Pre-K, hire the best teachers and pay the best ones amazingly well. Decrease the number of standardized testing, give teachers more freedom to teach based on their students, and make all programs accessible to everyone. Free tutoring available to everyone. Oh, and demand an environment that is conducive to learning. Fights and being disrespectful to teachers will not be tolerated. None of this restorative justice crap. Basically make all schools great.

None of those things fix a broken home environment or unengaged and uninvolved parents, which are the most significant contributing to students' poor performance in school and life.

There's nothing we can do to fix that though. All I know is that what they're doing now at the schools...it's not working. I pulled my kid from a high farms middle school to a much lower one. Curriculum is the same but the stark difference is that there is such rampant misbehavior and fights at the high farms school and the administrators don't do anything about it vs the low farm school where the kids are much more respectful and kids can actually concentrate on learning. When the environment is conducive to learning, everyone benefits..the teachers are happier, parents are happier and students are happier. We need to start expecting better from all students and stop tolerating the disrespectful behavior at schools.

But does discipline alone get us the healthy learning environment that you're describing? It doesn't seem like it.

Yeah. They do. They were taken away because of wrong think:
More poc get in trouble therefore the system is racist and we need to stop giving consequences.
What that leaves everyone with is stressful school, stressed out teachers where everyone does worse.

Yeah, but the kind of discipline you're talking about would require us to expel and suspend more, which the Blueprint for Maryland discourages. We'd also need to bring an alternative school for these kids, like the Mark Twain school. But that's not very politically feasible with the current climate.

So it's fine to wish for a thing, but it doesn't seem likely. So now what?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My father grew up dirt poor. He worked from the time he was a young kid until he retired. He worked hard at school, on homework, at work, and he excelled in life. He didn't let poverty be an excuse for not succeeding academically. Kids at the "W" schools work their asses off. The author of this article paints a picture of easy success for "W" school kids. It is not easy. They work, work, work and they CARE about doing well at school. There will need to be cultural shift for their to be a reduction in the learning gap. There are plenty of students who do incredibly well at the poorer performing schools because they work hard. There are tutoring programs for kids who can't afford a tutor in Montgomery County. Excuses, excuses. Work hard and you will succeed. Make school and education a priority in your family, and your children will succeed. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

More than kudos to your father, but this kind of anecdote, though oft-cited, is misleading. Working harder will give you a greater liklihood of succeeding than not working harder, but working harder doesn't even the field. If you start at a deficit, you are less likely to succeed at any given level of effort.

You can continue to blame the poor for their own condition, but much of the time you'd be wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fix the root of the problem. Bussing kids around to inflate test scores does not work. Universal Pre-K, hire the best teachers and pay the best ones amazingly well. Decrease the number of standardized testing, give teachers more freedom to teach based on their students, and make all programs accessible to everyone. Free tutoring available to everyone. Oh, and demand an environment that is conducive to learning. Fights and being disrespectful to teachers will not be tolerated. None of this restorative justice crap. Basically make all schools great.

None of those things fix a broken home environment or unengaged and uninvolved parents, which are the most significant contributing to students' poor performance in school and life.

There's nothing we can do to fix that though. All I know is that what they're doing now at the schools...it's not working. I pulled my kid from a high farms middle school to a much lower one. Curriculum is the same but the stark difference is that there is such rampant misbehavior and fights at the high farms school and the administrators don't do anything about it vs the low farm school where the kids are much more respectful and kids can actually concentrate on learning. When the environment is conducive to learning, everyone benefits..the teachers are happier, parents are happier and students are happier. We need to start expecting better from all students and stop tolerating the disrespectful behavior at schools.

But does discipline alone get us the healthy learning environment that you're describing? It doesn't seem like it.

Yeah. They do. They were taken away because of wrong think:
More poc get in trouble therefore the system is racist and we need to stop giving consequences.
What that leaves everyone with is stressful school, stressed out teachers where everyone does worse.

Yeah, but the kind of discipline you're talking about would require us to expel and suspend more, which the Blueprint for Maryland discourages. We'd also need to bring an alternative school for these kids, like the Mark Twain school. But that's not very politically feasible with the current climate.

So it's fine to wish for a thing, but it doesn't seem likely. So now what?

Tye climate is changing. People are fed up at all levels. The pendulum doesn't remain pressed one side or the other for very long

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My father grew up dirt poor. He worked from the time he was a young kid until he retired. He worked hard at school, on homework, at work, and he excelled in life. He didn't let poverty be an excuse for not succeeding academically. Kids at the "W" schools work their asses off. The author of this article paints a picture of easy success for "W" school kids. It is not easy. They work, work, work and they CARE about doing well at school. There will need to be cultural shift for their to be a reduction in the learning gap. There are plenty of students who do incredibly well at the poorer performing schools because they work hard. There are tutoring programs for kids who can't afford a tutor in Montgomery County. Excuses, excuses. Work hard and you will succeed. Make school and education a priority in your family, and your children will succeed. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

More than kudos to your father, but this kind of anecdote, though oft-cited, is misleading. Working harder will give you a greater liklihood of succeeding than not working harder, but working harder doesn't even the field. If you start at a deficit, you are less likely to succeed at any given level of effort.

You can continue to blame the poor for their own condition, but much of the time you'd be wrong.

I had a number of eye opening experiences when I worked at a fast food restaurant as a teen. There were a large number of people there who tried hard, worked hard but had problems because they were extremely stupid. Some people are just born stupid, and all the education in the world won’t fix it. These aren’t bad people, it’s nothing they did wrong. Their prospects in life are severely limited by something they have almost no control over. I remember reading a longitudinal study tracking military enlisted over time broken out by their ASVAB scores and starting SES. The better they scored on the ASVAB the better their chances were of rising out of poverty. Interestingly, there was no difference across racial lines for kids with the same ASVAB scores.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thinking outside the box here:

I’m a product of one of the high FARMS schools from the 1980’s during a unique time in MCPS history. I was part of the pilot program for honors and later AP classes. I was in a group of 30 students from 7th-12th grade. Of my cohort from this experiment, many of us were the first generation of our families to go to college. Many of us not only earned Bachelor’s degrees, we also earned Graduate degrees.

Looking back, what were the things that helped:

1) small class sizes - in a small class, everyone was expected to participate and the teacher was available to answer questions and provide feedback

2) encouragement for students to attend office hours and create study groups - I had the same group of students for core subject areas so we really bonded and supported one another as the curriculum got harder

3) free SAT prep by AP English teacher and AP Calculus teacher during lunch - I’m not sure if they gave us the help altruistictically or if they were compensated but after school many of us had jobs or extracurricular activities so lunch sessions were ideal. My parents wouldn’t been able to afford a private SAT class.

4) high expectations to remain in the program - we had to achieve high achievement test scores to be in the program and had to get As and Bs to continue.

5) internal drive - my parents couldn’t help me with most of my homework past 7th grade. I think the biggest factor was my own drive to succeed. I wanted a better life and better job opportunities than my parents. I understood (like my cohorts) that education was the key to a better life.

6) when you have a classroom where students are focused on learning, there are no discipline problems - our classes was a school within a school. For core classes, it was the same 20-25 students. The rest of the school was like general population where chaos ruled. I actually had to drop an elective once because of the teacher screaming and kids misbehaving to the point it was too stressful. It’s hard to learn in chaos.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I wish MCPS could start with creating very small classroom sizes for kids who can sit still and pay attention (really doesn't matter whether they are high academic achievers) in FARMS and Focus schools. Prior to the early 2000s, MCPS did not have to focus as much on special ed or ESL. Our schools served the majority of kids better. I think very small class sizes in ES would provide enough support for most ESL kids to catch up in the early ES years. 3rd-5th grade ESL students might need some sort of pull out support even in small classrooms. Older ESL students are a bigger problem for the district and many would benefit from nontraditional programs where they can work and learn English skills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Fix the root of the problem. Bussing kids around to inflate test scores does not work. Universal Pre-K, hire the best teachers and pay the best ones amazingly well. Decrease the number of standardized testing, give teachers more freedom to teach based on their students, and make all programs accessible to everyone. Free tutoring available to everyone. Oh, and demand an environment that is conducive to learning. Fights and being disrespectful to teachers will not be tolerated. None of this restorative justice crap. Basically make all schools great.

None of those things fix a broken home environment or unengaged and uninvolved parents, which are the most significant contributing to students' poor performance in school and life.

There's nothing we can do to fix that though. All I know is that what they're doing now at the schools...it's not working. I pulled my kid from a high farms middle school to a much lower one. Curriculum is the same but the stark difference is that there is such rampant misbehavior and fights at the high farms school and the administrators don't do anything about it vs the low farm school where the kids are much more respectful and kids can actually concentrate on learning. When the environment is conducive to learning, everyone benefits..the teachers are happier, parents are happier and students are happier. We need to start expecting better from all students and stop tolerating the disrespectful behavior at schools.

But does discipline alone get us the healthy learning environment that you're describing? It doesn't seem like it.

Yeah. They do. They were taken away because of wrong think:
More poc get in trouble therefore the system is racist and we need to stop giving consequences.
What that leaves everyone with is stressful school, stressed out teachers where everyone does worse.

Yeah, but the kind of discipline you're talking about would require us to expel and suspend more, which the Blueprint for Maryland discourages. We'd also need to bring an alternative school for these kids, like the Mark Twain school. But that's not very politically feasible with the current climate.

So it's fine to wish for a thing, but it doesn't seem likely. So now what?

Tye climate is changing. People are fed up at all levels. The pendulum doesn't remain pressed one side or the other for very long

Unfortunately, yes, this would mean more suspensions and bringing back an alternative school- but the benefits are much more- it means that the students who want to learn, especially those at the high FARMS schools and despite of their upbringing and home environment, will actually GET to learn. It also means that the teachers get to spend more time teaching than spending half their time dealing with kids in their classroom who consistently cause trouble.
When my kid was at the high FARMS school (60%), some of my kid's classes were a disaster. There were a handful of kids cursing, disrespecting, and being jerks to the teacher and classmates, that learning was basically an afterthought. The sad part was that most of the kids in these classrooms WANTED to learn and get good grades. The teachers on the other hand (many of them are young), were fed up and so drained and guess what, to no surprise, many left the school. Do you think teachers will have the appetite to start and sponsor after school clubs in this type of environment? If we want to reduce inequities at the schools, we have to make all schools conducive to learning. Without first fixing that, then all other suggestions (i.e. tutoring, programs, boundary reassignments, etc.) won't work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My father grew up dirt poor. He worked from the time he was a young kid until he retired. He worked hard at school, on homework, at work, and he excelled in life. He didn't let poverty be an excuse for not succeeding academically. Kids at the "W" schools work their asses off. The author of this article paints a picture of easy success for "W" school kids. It is not easy. They work, work, work and they CARE about doing well at school. There will need to be cultural shift for their to be a reduction in the learning gap. There are plenty of students who do incredibly well at the poorer performing schools because they work hard. There are tutoring programs for kids who can't afford a tutor in Montgomery County. Excuses, excuses. Work hard and you will succeed. Make school and education a priority in your family, and your children will succeed. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

More than kudos to your father, but this kind of anecdote, though oft-cited, is misleading. Working harder will give you a greater liklihood of succeeding than not working harder, but working harder doesn't even the field. If you start at a deficit, you are less likely to succeed at any given level of effort.

You can continue to blame the poor for their own condition, but much of the time you'd be wrong.

+1 I could tell a similar story of my grandfather, who never progressed past the 5th grade but who managed to raise a family on his wages as a hard-working blue collar laborer. That story would be very compelling, but it would leave a lot of things out.

It would ignore the fact that he was able to make a living without a high school diploma because he was brought on as an apprentice carpenter and eventually became a master carpenter within the union. At the time, he would not have been able to join the union if he hadn't been a white man with family to sponsor him in the apprenticeship. In his community, Black, Asian, and Latino people were not allowed to join the union, so they could spend their whole lives doing the same job but without any of the protections.

He was also able to transfer his GI Bill college credit to his kids from his service in WWII and in Korea. The GI Bill was not available to Black Americans at the time. So my dad went to college for free, because of a benefit my granddad would not have received if he had not been white.

Hard work isn't enough, and structural factors are in plain sight if you take time to look for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:'Additionally, transportation is a big problem due to Poolesville's location, resulting in only students with access to a car being able to attend, a luxury not many lower-income families can afford'

There is a bus...

+1
Weird accusations in the article that are simply untrue. 1) No one drives there unless you are local to the school anyway. It's too far for any family to make that trip on a twice daily basis. 2) Poolesville actually has a very robust magnet bus system that has tons of stops accessible to poorer areas of Gaithersburg and Germantown.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LMAO what moron wrote this:

"In theory, Montgomery County should spend the same amount of around 17 thousand dollars per student. However, in practice, the high-performing expectation of the county leads to funding that sways in the favor of high-performing schools."

Lower performing schools do get more resources, lower student teacher ratios, all of that. If there were numbers showing that wealthy schools get more, it would be plastered everywhere. I hate that people oversimplify this issue with lies.

(I saw this as someone who is fine spending more where needs are greater. But don't misrepresent the actual facts!)

So is this why only the wealthy Potomac schools offer accelerated math in ES?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Right, it's long established fact that money, sweat, interest, novel programs- none of these things solve education problems. LeBron James ' I promise school failed with 3+ years of failing 8th grade math tests.
Hedgies have tried innumerable times and failed.

The problem is that home stress and uneducated parents are the problem and the school district has no authority to try to fix that.

drop some links regarding the lebron school failing there achievement tests.

DP but Mark Zuckerberg gave $100M to Newark public schools and it vanished without a trace of impact

No he didn't. He and friends spent $200M on a foundation to interfere with Newark Schools.

And that spending was only 5 years of 3% of the budget ($1B+/year)

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-schools-education-newark-mayor-ras-baraka-cory-booker-2018-5

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:LMAO what moron wrote this:

"In theory, Montgomery County should spend the same amount of around 17 thousand dollars per student. However, in practice, the high-performing expectation of the county leads to funding that sways in the favor of high-performing schools."

Lower performing schools do get more resources, lower student teacher ratios, all of that. If there were numbers showing that wealthy schools get more, it would be plastered everywhere. I hate that people oversimplify this issue with lies.

(I saw this as someone who is fine spending more where needs are greater. But don't misrepresent the actual facts!)

They don't spend nearly enough in poverty areas. The need is far greater than the spending. The wealth in successful areas is astronomical.


Median household income in Silver Spring is $90K/yr

Median household income in Bethesda is $135K/yr

Median household income in Potomac is $190K/yr

Median household income in Baltimore is $52K/yr
(Not MCPS, but people love to trot out Baltimore to make specious arguments that spending a more doesn't help)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LMAO what moron wrote this:

"In theory, Montgomery County should spend the same amount of around 17 thousand dollars per student. However, in practice, the high-performing expectation of the county leads to funding that sways in the favor of high-performing schools."

Lower performing schools do get more resources, lower student teacher ratios, all of that. If there were numbers showing that wealthy schools get more, it would be plastered everywhere. I hate that people oversimplify this issue with lies.

(I saw this as someone who is fine spending more where needs are greater. But don't misrepresent the actual facts!)

So is this why only the wealthy Potomac schools offer accelerated math in ES?

Tell me more about this- what grade does accelerated math start at these ESs??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:LMAO what moron wrote this:

"In theory, Montgomery County should spend the same amount of around 17 thousand dollars per student. However, in practice, the high-performing expectation of the county leads to funding that sways in the favor of high-performing schools."

Lower performing schools do get more resources, lower student teacher ratios, all of that. If there were numbers showing that wealthy schools get more, it would be plastered everywhere. I hate that people oversimplify this issue with lies.

(I saw this as someone who is fine spending more where needs are greater. But don't misrepresent the actual facts!)

They don't spend nearly enough in poverty areas. The need is far greater than the spending. The wealth in successful areas is astronomical.


Median household income in Silver Spring is $90K/yr

Median household income in Bethesda is $135K/yr

Median household income in Potomac is $190K/yr

Median household income in Baltimore is $52K/yr
(Not MCPS, but people love to trot out Baltimore to make specious arguments that spending a more doesn't help)

So your recommendation is that per pupil spending needs to be high enough to offset HHI disparities? That's the first I'm hearing of that I don't think that's sustainable nor the role of the school system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The bad schools aren't bad because of MCPS. The bad schools are bad because of the students and parents.

On the plus side, this suggests a solution: massively increase magnet admissions, further boosting the scores at magnet schools.

[/quote

Every school should have a unique magnet program. More unique programs would provide more opportunities for students to seek a better experience in MCPS.