Tell me about Sligo Middle school
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Anonymous
I don't have a child in the school but know kids who go there and this has been their experience as well, except that their kids were excluded from certain groups because they were not white. Parents were NOT happy. Racism and bullying exist everywhere, and there are kids who are uninterested in academics at every school. However, let's not lie to ourselves. The lower-performing schools have more of those problems. |
Anonymous
But Sligo is not a "lower-performing" school. Just take a look at MCPS's own data on schools sending "highly able" students to the middle school magnets: https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/schools/msmagnet/about/MS%20Magnet%20Field%20Test%20Data%20by%20Sending%20MS.pdf |
Anonymous
Parent with daughter at Sligo again - Yes, Sligo has a strong group of "highly able" students. These are the kids you would want your child to associate with. These days, I'm guessing that a lot of schools in MoCo have this same dynamic. I suppose it helps if your child was a part of this peer group in elementary school. |
Anonymous
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If you child enjoyed BASIS, (likes school and wants to be challenged academically) she will be very, very bored with the academics at any MoCo MS, except possibly at TPMS--where she could possibly enroll in some of the magnet classes with the spaces reserved for in boundary students. The MoCo MS curriculum lists "Advanced" in the title, but the classes are not. Sandy Spring Friends School and St. Andrew's Episcopal School both have rolling admissions, and 6th grade is an ideal entry year to middle school. Both schools will say they have limited funds available for financial aid, but both schools are finalizing their enrollments and your timing is perfect if you tour and are interested. WIS (Washington International School) & Burke School are schools to consider if you want to live/work in DC. SSFS, SAES, WIS & Burke all go through 12th grade.
St. Patricks, Norwood, WES, Sheridan also may/will have limited spaces open for 6th, but all end at 8th. You can get a lot more house/$ north of Silver Spring, closer to SSFS. SSFS and SAES both have shuttles to many neighborhoods throughout the area. Welcome & best wishes! |
Anonymous
The PP who mentioned BASIS was posting back in 2014. |
Anonymous
This is what I mean by parents kidding themselves. MCPS carefully crafts the data to hide the fact that lots of its schools are full of un-motivated, poorly-educated students, that this correlates to socio-economics, and thus geography. This does not mean poorer kids are stupid, it means poorer kids are not being taught to the same standards, and many don't have parents with lofty expectations who can push them and advocate for them. If your child is not among the handful of students in advanced classes, he or she will be lumped in with the rest, and the rest is nothing to write home about. This is very different from wealthier districts, where teachers are better and parents are entitled and influential enough to hold them accountable: there are more advanced classes than non-advanced classes in a typical west-MCPS middle school. It's the reverse in east-MCPS. Once you realize this, you understand why parents are beggaring themselves to move west. |
Anonymous
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Anonymous
This is spot on. The PP before this poster was being a bit deceitful by omitting that the file she shared had already been adjusted. Kids from Westland need to score much higher on MAP tests to make the list while a kid scoring far lower from Sligo is included because Westland is high performing/high SES and Sligo is low performing/low SES. Its fair and accurate to say that there are up to a dozen students at Sligo that meet the lowered bar for what MCPS considers highly able but that number is still pretty small even with the lower bar for making the list. I disagree though that the teachers are better or worse at other schools. It takes A LOT to educate low performing kids. You face so many challenges as a teacher at a school like Sligo with kids who have many problems -learning, being far below grade level, under treated learning disabilities, disruptive home environments and no enrichment. Its far easier to teach in a western school. |
Anonymous
Actually, we don't know at all that the file has been "adjusted." We know that for MS magnet admissions, there was a bit of a sliding scale depending on home school demographics in terms of how the Cogat was assessed. But the file shared by PP doesn't just contain the Cogat. It also has MAP and PARCC. Now, neither Cogat nor MAP scores are available, but PARCC scores are all on Maryland School Report Card. So, this gets to a debate that is constantly being hashed out on DCUM. Is a school like Westland "better" because they have more kids who score well on standardized tests? If you took that SAME child and sent them to Sligo MS, would they do as well? Basically, is Westland better or does it just have more kids with the demographic qualities that we know translate to higher test scores. Let's look at how non-FARMS white kids do at both schools. Westland - For 6th grade ELA: about 10 percent of white students received a 5 on the PARCC exam. Sligo - For 6th grade ELA: about 13 percent of white students received a 5. But wait, you say. That might just be the strength of the Sligo MS feeders. So let's look at 8th grade instead. Westland - For 8th grade ELA, about 25 percent of students received a 5 on the PARCC exam. Sligo - For 8th grade ELA, about 22 percent received a 5. There doesn't seem to be a clear winner in Westland, and certainly not enough for people to "beggar" themselves to move west. The truth is that a demographically similar kid will do the same at any school where they can find an academic cohort, which is literally any middle school in the county. |
Anonymous
At Sligo, the drop is much steeper. There is a very large contingent (possible majority) of completely unmotivated kids at Sligo that you won't find at a school like Westland. Again, there are very smart, highly motivated kids at Sligo. My daughter is part of that group so she is doing great at Sligo. After a quick Google search, there is a HUGE difference if you add in PARCC scores of 4. Westland - 66% of students scored 4 or 5 Sligo - 35% of students scored 4 or 5 This was taken from a 2017 report. I seriously doubt the numbers changed much. http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/parcc2017/middle/ |
Anonymous
No doubt that school wide, there are many more kids at Westland who are passing than at Sligo. That wasn't really the question posed upthread, though. The question was whether it would be worth risking bankruptcy to move west. If the scores for sub-groups are similar at each school, but there are just MORE of one sub-group at a certain school than another, then it doesn't make sense to beggar oneself to live in-bounds for Westland. I realize that comparing white kids to white kids is problematic, but it does help get to this question of whether an individual child would do about the same at each school. All of the comparisons below are 6th grade ELA, because that was the first landing page on the Maryland School Report Card but I suspect the results would hold more or less true. At Sligo, about 70 percent of white kids get a 4 or 5. Exactly the same as Westland. At Westland, about 70 percent of white kids get a 4 or 5. Now let's look at Black kids. At Silgo, about 44 percent get a 4 or a 5. At Westland, about 43 percent get a 4 or a 5. The sub-groups perform pretty much identically at each school, suggesting the quality of education at each is the same, and suggesting that no one is doing a great job educating kids of color. |
Anonymous
Well thought out response, thank you. I can't disagree with anything you said. |
Anonymous
+1 For what it's worth, my DC went to another DCC MS although we live only a mile from Sligo, and I've had no shortage of interaction with Sligo parents/students. Her MS friend group ended up at all the DCC HSs and her HS friend group came from the various MSs. Sligo is well liked because of it's small size, and I haven't heard any recent complaints. It does slightly out score nearby schools. I've also had friends who's kids were at Westland because of the immersion program, and they had some gripes about out-of-bounds kids feeling outcast in a high SES school. But the only real take away is, similar kids have similar outcomes regardless of the schools. Everyone's on to college in the fall, and it's all good. |
Anonymous
| How many kids go on to Einstein? If they go elsewhere, where do they wind up and why? |
Anonymous
| I have heard good things about Sligo and am happy to be zoned for it |