The most desirable elementary/ms/hs boundary neighborhoods and schools for motivated kids?

[Anonymous]

It's more than one kid.

[Anonymous]

MCPS is really failing kids that are motivated and bright. There is a difference between an adult perspective that grades don't matter and a child's perspective. Some kids have he emotional IQ to figure out "Yeah, this is all I have to do and I'm done". These kids do well with the lower standards and have other interests. I have one kid for whom is just fine.

Kids that are motivated, perfectionists, or just care a lot about how they do in school have a hard time. Its very demoralizing for these kids to see that no matter how hard they work or even if they do everything on the rubric for an ES, they still will not get an ES. Its gets worse when they turn around and get an ES for something they know they didn't work hard on. It doesn't matter how many times you try to tell this type of child that P is fine, grades don't matter, don't worry about it etc. They feel the unfairness of the system and worse it really demotivates them from their school work. It makes my generally anxious child just sad which really pisses me off.

If I had to do over again, I would not have moved to Montgomery County for the schools. We have already decided to do private for high school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A huge contingent of kids at our HGC are from Wayside and Lakelands. The parents rave about their home school and I see their kids are happy, bright learners who have also been academically well-prepared.

Wayside is a great school by all accounts (and I personally know some parents of kids there who rave about it). The only issue to me with moving to that cluster now with a child about to enter ES is that hr or she will spend 18 months in a holding school. Perhaps not a big deal, but an inconvenience for sure.

With respect to Lakelands (by which I assume you mean Rachel Carson ES?), RC is a great ES. However, Lakelands MS and QO HS may not be in the same league academically, as some weaker ES' feed in.

[Anonymous]

never heard of a kid in elementary school describing themselves as motivated, must be a tiger parent who must have their child be the best

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A huge contingent of kids at our HGC are from Wayside and Lakelands. The parents rave about their home school and I see their kids are happy, bright learners who have also been academically well-prepared.

Wayside is a great school by all accounts (and I personally know some parents of kids there who rave about it). The only issue to me with moving to that cluster now with a child about to enter ES is that hr or she will spend 18 months in a holding school. Perhaps not a big deal, but an inconvenience for sure.

With respect to Lakelands (by which I assume you mean Rachel Carson ES?), RC is a great ES. However, Lakelands MS and QO HS may not be in the same league academically, as some weaker ES' feed in.

Do you mean "weaker elementary schools"? Or do you mean "elementary schools with lower test scores, fewer white and Asian kids, and more poor kids"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:MCPS is really failing kids that are motivated and bright. There is a difference between an adult perspective that grades don't matter and a child's perspective. Some kids have he emotional IQ to figure out "Yeah, this is all I have to do and I'm done". These kids do well with the lower standards and have other interests. I have one kid for whom is just fine.

Kids that are motivated, perfectionists, or just care a lot about how they do in school have a hard time. Its very demoralizing for these kids to see that no matter how hard they work or even if they do everything on the rubric for an ES, they still will not get an ES. Its gets worse when they turn around and get an ES for something they know they didn't work hard on. It doesn't matter how many times you try to tell this type of child that P is fine, grades don't matter, don't worry about it etc. They feel the unfairness of the system and worse it really demotivates them from their school work. It makes my generally anxious child just sad which really pisses me off.

If I had to do over again, I would not have moved to Montgomery County for the schools. We have already decided to do private for high school.

My DCs went to a private k-8 and there were no grades until 6th grade. The grading was very similar to the MCPS grading. That is not uncommon in the non-Catholic private elementary schools. They cared about school but didn't worry about what their grades were. In fact parents were asked not to share grades/report cards until 6th grade. The focus was on the learning, not the numeric assessment of every assignment.

We switched one kid from private to MCPS for high school and it's been great. There is plenty of grading in high school if that's what you are focused on. There are edline updates pretty much every day. The one who continued in private school for high school got much less immediate feedback, teachers were slow to grade, and you really didn't know quite where you stood until final grades came out. So do some research into grading policies before you make the jump to private school for the grading system.

[Anonymous]

Op here-ms kid is the motivated one-elementary kid is just a kid-not a tiger mom, quite the opposite

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean "weaker elementary schools"? Or do you mean "elementary schools with lower test scores, fewer white and Asian kids, and more poor kids"?

Both.

[Anonymous]

PP the better private schools in this area do give grades.

It would be OK not to give grades and only give feedback but then you have to really not give grades. MCPS gives out a grading scale N, I, P and ES but there is nothing consistent or equal in how these grades are derived. A motivated kid that does everything on a rubric may or may not get an ES. They may get an ES for no reason at all. They usually all get Ps whether they work hard or do the bare minimum. This is demoralizing to students who are very motivated....its sending them the message that learning doesn't matter or that assessments are inherently unfair.

[Anonymous]

never heard of a kid in elementary school describing themselves as motivated, must be a tiger parent who must have their child be the best

This has nothing to do with tiger parents. Humans are naturally driven by reward seeking behavior. This is why kids enjoy playing games, want to win, score higher etc. Positive praise is the cornerstone of good parenting. Kids learn manners and good behaviors by being praised and they seek this praise as a reward. By the time a kid enters elementary school, they seek rewards beyond their parents. Even the less motivated kids are very aware of whether they received the highest grade or the lowest grade and what it took to get there. Regardless of how the parents feel, some kids care greatly about this type of reward and other children care less. Note: the children that care less are not less bright or lazy. They simply have a different cost/value/reward seeking personality. They may be highly motivated by winning a game to support their team mates.

In a system that rewards actual achievement, academically oriented reward motivated students do great. They perform at or above their academic capabilities. The grades or rewards motivate them that working hard pays off. All these kids need to do great is a fair description of what is expected and they will work to achieve it. In the MCPS system achievement is by design is never rewarded. MCPS dangles an ES but the practice that it is not consistently given and more random hits these kids hard. When you add in how easy it is to get a P you've just just destroyed the reward structure that these kids thrive in. These kids either decide it isn't fair or they just can never be good enough so they stop working hard. They don't feel better about working less just deflated.

Imagine a sports game where in order to win, a team would need to score 5 times more than the other team. Let's say that the team did this and all of sudden the ref said no winner, I just decided you needed you need a score 7 times more. The next day the other team scores only twice more than the other team and the ref declares them the winner because today its 2 times. The motivation of the team would go out to window because the reward structure is no known to be unfair and random.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP the better private schools in this area do give grades.

It would be OK not to give grades and only give feedback but then you have to really not give grades. MCPS gives out a grading scale N, I, P and ES but there is nothing consistent or equal in how these grades are derived. A motivated kid that does everything on a rubric may or may not get an ES. They may get an ES for no reason at all. They usually all get Ps whether they work hard or do the bare minimum. This is demoralizing to students who are very motivated....its sending them the message that learning doesn't matter or that assessments are inherently unfair.

Here's the grading policy for Sidwell's lower school:

"Progress evaluations for all Lower School students are in the form of parent-teacher conferences and checklists and narrative reports, which are sent to parents in October and June."

Middle school said it's a mix of grades and narrative reports.

I am not positive but think I recall from the GDS tour that the lower school does not have grades. Perhaps a GDS parent can confirm or deny though.

How do you define the "better" private schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean "weaker elementary schools"? Or do you mean "elementary schools with lower test scores, fewer white and Asian kids, and more poor kids"?

Both.

How do you know they're weaker, aside from having fewer white and Asian kids and more poor kids, which is typically associated with lower test scores, even at outstanding schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:PP the better private schools in this area do give grades.

It would be OK not to give grades and only give feedback but then you have to really not give grades. MCPS gives out a grading scale N, I, P and ES but there is nothing consistent or equal in how these grades are derived. A motivated kid that does everything on a rubric may or may not get an ES. They may get an ES for no reason at all. They usually all get Ps whether they work hard or do the bare minimum. This is demoralizing to students who are very motivated....its sending them the message that learning doesn't matter or that assessments are inherently unfair.

Under the old report card, half of the grades now getting P/I/N got O/S/N (was it N? was it I? I don't remember). How, specifically, is O/S/N motivating and consistent, but P/I/N isn't?

And under the old report cards, were the A/B/Cs always consistent everywhere? Every teacher gave exactly the same grade for exactly the same thing, everywhere in every school in MCPS? That's not my experience of it.

I also want to know how everybody knows that everybody gets Ps in everything. And how the kids in my elementary school managed to learn anything (and even like school!), given that we didn't get any grades.

And, finally, extrinsically-motivated kids may do things for grades. But extrinsic motivation is not the only kind. Nor is it the kind I want to encourage among elementary school students at school. In the long run, intrinsic motivation serves people a lot better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Imagine a sports game where in order to win, a team would need to score 5 times more than the other team. Let's say that the team did this and all of sudden the ref said no winner, I just decided you needed you need a score 7 times more. The next day the other team scores only twice more than the other team and the ref declares them the winner because today its 2 times. The motivation of the team would go out to window because the reward structure is no known to be unfair and random.

Eh. You can solve this problem very easily by ignoring the ES. Learning in school is not a sports game.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do you mean "weaker elementary schools"? Or do you mean "elementary schools with lower test scores, fewer white and Asian kids, and more poor kids"?

Both.

How do you know they're weaker, aside from having fewer white and Asian kids and more poor kids, which is typically associated with lower test scores, even at outstanding schools?

Well, for example, you could look at the data and see that 85-95+% of FARMS students at Rachel Carson are achieving proficiency on MSAs, and that in percentage for FARMS students is in the ~70s at Brown Station.