How do the W school moms feel about the Ocean City, MD Elementary school being ranked best in Maryland?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I take rankings with a LARGE grain of salt, because I know that schools with homogeneous middle class populations tend to score better. This is how schools outside of large metropolitan areas get ranked number 1.

MCPS is one of the nation's best school systems for kids with special needs and gifted kids: there are multiple special programs and magnets. DCUM tends to criticize them all and say they're insufficient, but I know that they're still better than what other public school systems have developed.

MCPS also deals with an large group of English learners, a large contingent who has arrived from Central America, but also, since we're close to Embassies and international institutions, some from educated, well-to-do foreign families.

This social hetereogeneity lowers scores. But I WANT that diversity. We are educated foreigners ourselves (not English learners, though) and we want a multi-cultural student body that brings various perspectives. One of my kids needed an IEP in school, and had services and accommodations. It was great. I don't think he would have received them so easily anywhere else. My other kid is gifted and has benefited from all the acceleration that her high school has been able to give her. She will take multivariable calculus and differential equations in 11th grade, and about 14 APs.

Despite all the handwringing about MCPS on DCUM, I know this is a great school system and I am happy to be here.

I’m a gifted parent of two kids that both score in the gifted range. I would say MCPS schools are terrible for gifted kids. I grew up in South Florida decades ago and the programs I had put MCPS to shame. If we had a little more money, I’d 100% send my kids to private school.

I’ve seen little programming and my kids almost never mention their teachers. The teachers almost consistently fail to inspire and supplement.

It also fails students who aren't self-motivated. It's impossible for parents to help them and teachers don't care so for them it's sink or swim.

[Anonymous]

I have a kid who is gifted but also SN and agree that MCPS does well with supporting SN but has basically no interest in gifted kids in elementary school or middle school outside of the magnet programs (which are very far for us). Definitely not what I expected based on experiences of parents with kids even 10 years older than mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a W mom. I can’t even figure out why I should care about this.

I'm a W dad. Guess my opinion doesn't matter.

[Anonymous]

Not a W mother, but young kids really just need sunlight and fresh air. This area seems to fail at those.

[Anonymous]

Why would we expect that mothers from so called "W" schools have any more insight into the success of a school in Ocean City than anyone else, mother or not? Why would they even have an opinion about this?