What happened to Oakland Terrace?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is what makes it so difficult to buy real estate. When we were looking, how does one actually compare quality of schools without personally knowing people with kids at those schools (and even then, it's anecdotal). I know I had a hard time.

I think the answer is: learn the curriculum and policies of the school system at large (MCPS) and then quit worrying so much about how they're implemented in each school. Believe it or not, 15 years ago no one had access to the test scores or demographic data at their local schools. Life went on anyway. In fact, people were probably more satisfied with their schools. I don't think anyone has a right to know how many kids are on FARMS, how many are black, how many are ESOL, etc. Why do we think we have a right to this information?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

But that wasn't the point of PPs post: the issue (correctly raised, I think): is that GS conflates having majority wealthy and/or white students with quality of education offered. The highest ranked schools don't even have "high needs" populations, or at least, very few of them.

The kids in the wealthier schools must be getting a better education. In the high FARMS, high ESOL schools, the teachers have more work to do with that population, bringing them up to par. What happens with the kids who are further ahead? I doubt they get as much challenging work as the high SES schools. Title 1 teachers have to collect, interpret and discuss data until they are blue in the face. How in the hell can they reach and improve every single student while meeting the demands of admin?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


The kids in the wealthier schools must be getting a better education. In the high FARMS, high ESOL schools, the teachers have more work to do with that population, bringing them up to par. What happens with the kids who are further ahead? I doubt they get as much challenging work as the high SES schools. Title 1 teachers have to collect, interpret and discuss data until they are blue in the face. How in the hell can they reach and improve every single student while meeting the demands of admin?

Not according to their ever-complaining parents on DCUM, they're not.

Plus it's not like kids are identical widgets in a simple input-output model. Kids from affluent families have problems in school too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


The kids in the wealthier schools must be getting a better education. In the high FARMS, high ESOL schools, the teachers have more work to do with that population, bringing them up to par. What happens with the kids who are further ahead? I doubt they get as much challenging work as the high SES schools. Title 1 teachers have to collect, interpret and discuss data until they are blue in the face. How in the hell can they reach and improve every single student while meeting the demands of admin?

Not according to their ever-complaining parents on DCUM, they're not.

Plus it's not like kids are identical widgets in a simple input-output model. Kids from affluent families have problems in school too.

+1 I see folks all the time on DCUM who take pains to point out they are in a "W cluster" and who are complaining about stuff that just doesn't happen at our east county Focus School. I've also noticed that the weakest teachers that wash out of our school end up in Bethesda and Potomac. We almost never lose experienced teachers to the western part of the county (it has never happened in our 10 years of MCPS) but we lose first-year teachers all the time, which is no major loss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

What about schools like Stonegate Elementary or Woodlin Elementary? For both schools, kids in all demographics (race and SES) outperform their counterparts across the state, yet both schools dropped 3 points in their GS rating.

Maybe what we need to learn is that GS doesn't actually tell you how good a school is? It's pretty ironic, though, that Black and Latinx activists have been telling us that for years but it has only become a "problem" when majority white schools are impacted.

Exactly this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what makes it so difficult to buy real estate. When we were looking, how does one actually compare quality of schools without personally knowing people with kids at those schools (and even then, it's anecdotal). I know I had a hard time.

I think the answer is: learn the curriculum and policies of the school system at large (MCPS) and then quit worrying so much about how they're implemented in each school. Believe it or not, 15 years ago no one had access to the test scores or demographic data at their local schools. Life went on anyway. In fact, people were probably more satisfied with their schools. I don't think anyone has a right to know how many kids are on FARMS, how many are black, how many are ESOL, etc. Why do we think we have a right to this information?

Montgomery County has been collecting this data for years. They absolutely had demographic data 15 years ago. You have no idea what you're talking about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what makes it so difficult to buy real estate. When we were looking, how does one actually compare quality of schools without personally knowing people with kids at those schools (and even then, it's anecdotal). I know I had a hard time.

I think the answer is: learn the curriculum and policies of the school system at large (MCPS) and then quit worrying so much about how they're implemented in each school. Believe it or not, 15 years ago no one had access to the test scores or demographic data at their local schools. Life went on anyway. In fact, people were probably more satisfied with their schools. I don't think anyone has a right to know how many kids are on FARMS, how many are black, how many are ESOL, etc. Why do we think we have a right to this information?

Montgomery County has been collecting this data for years. They absolutely had demographic data 15 years ago. You have no idea what you're talking about.

But was it available for anybody to easily look up, 15 years ago?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is what makes it so difficult to buy real estate. When we were looking, how does one actually compare quality of schools without personally knowing people with kids at those schools (and even then, it's anecdotal). I know I had a hard time.

I think the answer is: learn the curriculum and policies of the school system at large (MCPS) and then quit worrying so much about how they're implemented in each school. Believe it or not, 15 years ago no one had access to the test scores or demographic data at their local schools. Life went on anyway. In fact, people were probably more satisfied with their schools. I don't think anyone has a right to know how many kids are on FARMS, how many are black, how many are ESOL, etc. Why do we think we have a right to this information?

Montgomery County has been collecting this data for years. They absolutely had demographic data 15 years ago. You have no idea what you're talking about.

But was it available for anybody to easily look up, 15 years ago?

15 years ago? Yes. 25 years ago? No.