Stats on magnet enrollment by home school
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Anonymous
And that won't happen. What they are actually trying to achieve is for students to NOT want to go to other programs and just stay at the home school that offers some program. There are only two STEM magnets, and Wootton sends a whopping 105 to Blair, but 0 to < 10 to the other STEM magnets. Some of it is due to proximity, but largely, IMO, it's due to the classes that are offered. FWIW, my kids didn't/don't go to Blair magnet, but I don't think MCPS will be able to recreate Blair magnet and all of its very advanced course offerings at other schools. I'll say again - finding STEM teachers is difficult, even more so for these very advanced magnet level classes. The programs will be watered down, and it will be a "magnet" in name only. |
Anonymous
That also tells you that the Asian students are outperforming everyone. I guess some people don't like that. They would only be happy if Asian students performed as poorly as the other minorities. No matter how many programs MCPS tries to create, the overall performance of URM won't shift that much. That's a hard pill to swallow, I realize, but it's the hard truth. MCPS is better off focusing on bringing up the bottom, not bringing the top down, to close the achievement gap. |
Anonymous
Those zones have most the tippy top students in the county. |
Anonymous
They don't have to compete with Asian students for the top college spots. More than likely, a large cohort of Whitman students come from family with money and connections. They don't have to worry about being in an advanced program. They will use their family money and connections to get their kids into a great college. |
Anonymous
And that's why MCPS wants to create regional programs. They see it as unfair for the kids from lower performing schools to try to complete with kids from higher performing schools. To some degree, I do agree with that, but I don't think doing away with county wide magnets is a good idea. It will definitely water down the program. There aren't enough well trained/degreed STEM teachers to teach such advanced topics. |
Anonymous
And many of them use their family money to get their kids into an elite private high school. Where you you think GDS and STA and NCS, and Bullis and all the rest families live? |
Anonymous
They could just expand programs if they wanted the second tier performing students in the programs. But that's not what they want. They want paper equity. They want the lower tier performing students in the "same" programs as the upper tier, which is only possible by eliminating the upper tier programs. |
Anonymous
No, they don't. The document is countywide and regional programs combined. Most of the Northwood students at these special programs are in the local DCC regional programs (Wheaton and Blair CAP), half at CAP. CAP at Blair is the local neighborhood school for Northwood |
Anonymous
Going from two locations to six is expanding the programs. |
Anonymous
Yo' HoCo co-wo loco, lololol |
Anonymous
What does "tippy top students" even mean? I can't imagine those schools have that many more gifted kids with high potential than other schools, most of which send less than 10 kids. I'd believe kids in those areas have higher test scores or other accomplishments based on exposure though, between the elementary and middle schools and the exposure and support from better-off parents But that shouldn't affect admissions that much, should it-- what are the admissions criteria? The magnets are supposed to serve the smartest kids in the county, right? Not just provide extra resources and supports to kids who get ahead because of receiving more resources and support than kids of equal intelligence in poorer areas/families? If the countywide magnets are actually serving the smartest, most capable kids of all backgrounds countywide, regardless of background, then I support them. But if they're essentially just helping 95th percentile kids from rich areas get more advantages than top 1-2% kids from poor areas because the richer kids score better on exposure-based tests like MAP or the like, then I have a huge problem with that |
Anonymous
High intelligence, high performance people tend to cluster together and raise their kids together. People who care about education find each other. The differences are stark. If a smart kid hasn't learned anything much by 8th grade, that's a tragedy but throwing them into an advanced accelerated program isn't going to help. They need something to help them catch up. |
Anonymous
People like to tell themselves that, but I don't buy it. Rich schools don't just so happen to have 5-10 times the number of profoundly gifted kids as poor schools. But they do often have many more kids who are bright and get lots of supports to succeed and access accelerated material and score high on exposure-based tests like MAP. And no one's saying that smart kids who are behind grade level/"haven't learned anything much" by 8th grade should be admitted into advanced programs. Just that bright rich kids who test better than profoundly gifted, slightly-ahead-of-grade level poor kids shouldn't get all the spots and leave the highly gifted poor kids behind with the justification that the poor kids can just take AP classes and that'll be fine. |
Anonymous
Perfectly described. There is no way all six regions will equal because of the cohort and teaching quality. |
Anonymous
Well, your opinion is worthless and useless. Wootton is not eligible for the other STEM magnet. |