Is Cold Spring HGC the only HGC targeted by MCPS for denying entrance to MS magnet programs?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

If that is all that happened then I don't think you would CS parents would be upset. Disappointed certainly if your kid does not get a spot but not upset. In fact I think most fair minded people would welcome the tremendous increase in screening. I think what people are upset by is that it sounds like MCPS might be using geography to decide who gets the limited spots in the magnet middle schools. So a kid in a high performing school cluster with 99s across the board on the Cogat (and presumably commensurately high MAP scores) is rejected in favor of a student with lower test scores.
We know that many students who were rejected scored higher than the median of accepted students.

We also know that after the Metis study, MCPS has been trying to improve diversity in the magnet programs. This is a laudable goal as long as it is done in an honest and fair way. If it is done by increasing community outreach and simplifying the application process, fantastic. If it is done by lowering admission standards and taking spots away from more qualified children well then that is not ok. Unfortunately, MCPS has a sorry track record in this area. Many years ago they decided to focus on the achievement gap which is a real problem. There is only so much a school system can do to solve a problem that has highly complex socioeconomic causes. Despite throwing lots of resources to bring test scores up for groups that were lagging, the results were not improving enough and so MCPS has done things like reducing final exams in most high school classes (which causes grade inflation and makes it harder to differentiate between above average and high achievers), changing ES report cards so that nearly everyone is some variant of "proficient". If the data is opaque it is hard to discern how big the achievement gap truly is.

I see their move to just give parents their child's percentiles on the Cogat score to be a similar attempt to obscure information that would tell the public what is actually happening. The raw score for the 99th percentile of COGAT ranges from 135-160. The Cogat mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 16 which means that a child with a score of 160 is more than one standard deviation away from a kid with a 135. I wish there was some way to force MCPS to release the raw test scores of accepted and rejected students organized by home middle school. Then we would see whether they have been able to increase geographic diversity in the magnet programs for a good reason (spreading a wider net) or for a bad reason (discrimination). If it is the former, I will stand up and cheer. If it is the latter, I am going to remain upset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be interesting to hear from other clusters aside from Cold Spring as to what their admissions results are? Having said that, I think Cold Spring was hit the hardest -- i.e. to go from ~25 kids being accepted in years past to 2 is drastic no matter how you dice it.

Next year parents should prepare their kids more for the application process and testing. The magnet program will only get more competitive as more people find out about it. At least 2 students were prepared from CS.

You've missed the point of the changes. the change was trying to take the prep out of the process as CS parents (generalization of course) have historically prepped their kids the most. There also is no application process to prep for now -- no essays, no activities, no awards, no teacher recs. So, the whole thing seems counter productive to its intentions of dealing with the idea that testing was biased towards certain groups (white/Asian) because now all that is left is the test! What can they do? I guess use region to try to even things up? Seems a shame to ditch all that other data.

Are you a Cold Spring insider to know this? Did you take a poll of the kids? Seriously, I am a Cold Spring parent and these kinds of generalization disappoints me. Yes, we have heard of a few kids prepping but for the most part this does not ring true, unless prepping means you read with your kids daily.

Thank you for speaking up. I am truly sick and tired of some posters who persistently flog this tired stereotype of magnet kids in general and Asian magnet kids in particular. Does prepping happen? Yes it does. Is it widespread? No it is not (believe me the kids know who preps and who does not). Is prepping effective? Perhaps on the margins. I certainly don't think it gives these kids a huge advantage. It is not a ticket to the magnet programs. Most of the kids who are currently in magnet programs did not prep in order to get in.

[Anonymous]

I think most of the HGCs were targeted. If a kid came to HGC from a good home school unless they were an outlier in their HGC they did not get in the MS magnet.

On the other hand, slightly above average URM students from any school and HGC students from poor performing home schools were invited to magnet MS.

We are assigned to a low performing ES, MS and HS. My children have always been in magnet programs and are outliers within the magnet program as well. Still, if the magnet programs are so diluted that any bright kid (but not exceptional child) can be included, I do not want to trek to a magnet program. The value of the magnet program is the peer group first, the parents second, the curriculum third and if we are lucky we get qualified teachers, dedicated coordinator and not hostile administration.

I wonder since when doing well became such a bad thing in American society?

[Anonymous]

The level of entitlement on this and the other magnet threads is beyond belief. 'nuff said. Every additional post drives a stake through your collective cause. PR matters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think most of the HGCs were targeted. If a kid came to HGC from a good home school unless they were an outlier in their HGC they did not get in the MS magnet.

On the other hand, slightly above average URM students from any school and HGC students from poor performing home schools were invited to magnet MS.

We are assigned to a low performing ES, MS and HS. My children have always been in magnet programs and are outliers within the magnet program as well. Still, if the magnet programs are so diluted that any bright kid (but not exceptional child) can be included, I do not want to trek to a magnet program. The value of the magnet program is the peer group first, the parents second, the curriculum third and if we are lucky we get qualified teachers, dedicated coordinator and not hostile administration.

I wonder since when doing well became such a bad thing in American society?

There is absolutely no way you could have the data to support the assertions in bold, so this is just inflammatory.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

If that is all that happened then I don't think you would CS parents would be upset. Disappointed certainly if your kid does not get a spot but not upset. In fact I think most fair minded people would welcome the tremendous increase in screening. I think what people are upset by is that it sounds like MCPS might be using geography to decide who gets the limited spots in the magnet middle schools. So a kid in a high performing school cluster with 99s across the board on the Cogat (and presumably commensurately high MAP scores) is rejected in favor of a student with lower test scores.
We know that many students who were rejected scored higher than the median of accepted students.

We also know that after the Metis study, MCPS has been trying to improve diversity in the magnet programs. This is a laudable goal as long as it is done in an honest and fair way. If it is done by increasing community outreach and simplifying the application process, fantastic. If it is done by lowering admission standards and taking spots away from more qualified children well then that is not ok. Unfortunately, MCPS has a sorry track record in this area. Many years ago they decided to focus on the achievement gap which is a real problem. There is only so much a school system can do to solve a problem that has highly complex socioeconomic causes. Despite throwing lots of resources to bring test scores up for groups that were lagging, the results were not improving enough and so MCPS has done things like reducing final exams in most high school classes (which causes grade inflation and makes it harder to differentiate between above average and high achievers), changing ES report cards so that nearly everyone is some variant of "proficient". If the data is opaque it is hard to discern how big the achievement gap truly is.

I see their move to just give parents their child's percentiles on the Cogat score to be a similar attempt to obscure information that would tell the public what is actually happening. The raw score for the 99th percentile of COGAT ranges from 135-160. The Cogat mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 16 which means that a child with a score of 160 is more than one standard deviation away from a kid with a 135. I wish there was some way to force MCPS to release the raw test scores of accepted and rejected students organized by home middle school. Then we would see whether they have been able to increase geographic diversity in the magnet programs for a good reason (spreading a wider net) or for a bad reason (discrimination). If it is the former, I will stand up and cheer. If it is the latter, I am going to remain upset.

Did the program have a 99%theshold for entrance ? There is likely a minimum score but once students are above that, all are qualified to attend, that is where other factors come into play for acceptance.

[Anonymous]

I will reserve judgment until the numbers are out (and I assume at some point someone will get the numbers) which are median scores of admitted students by school or cluster and race. MCPS argued that the cost of universal screening was worth it because they were a lot of not identifying a lot of URMs who might have been equally qualified for the programs. They then made the criteria more "holistic" but more nebulous and gave less weight to the tests which undercut their initial argument and made everyone suspicious.

If we find the admit scores are similar across all racial groups then it should cause a lot of the people on this thread to quiet down. If they are not there are probably some lawsuits coming.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will reserve judgment until the numbers are out (and I assume at some point someone will get the numbers) which are median scores of admitted students by school or cluster and race. MCPS argued that the cost of universal screening was worth it because they were a lot of not identifying a lot of URMs who might have been equally qualified for the programs. They then made the criteria more "holistic" but more nebulous and gave less weight to the tests which undercut their initial argument and made everyone suspicious.

If we find the admit scores are similar across all racial groups then it should cause a lot of the people on this thread to quiet down. If they are not there are probably some lawsuits coming.

I agree but will we get the raw scores though? Why would MCPS disclose them?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I will reserve judgment until the numbers are out (and I assume at some point someone will get the numbers) which are median scores of admitted students by school or cluster and race. MCPS argued that the cost of universal screening was worth it because they were a lot of not identifying a lot of URMs who might have been equally qualified for the programs. They then made the criteria more "holistic" but more nebulous and gave less weight to the tests which undercut their initial argument and made everyone suspicious.

If we find the admit scores are similar across all racial groups then it should cause a lot of the people on this thread to quiet down. If they are not there are probably some lawsuits coming.

Do you really think this is something that MCPS would publish?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

If that is all that happened then I don't think you would CS parents would be upset. Disappointed certainly if your kid does not get a spot but not upset. In fact I think most fair minded people would welcome the tremendous increase in screening. I think what people are upset by is that it sounds like MCPS might be using geography to decide who gets the limited spots in the magnet middle schools. So a kid in a high performing school cluster with 99s across the board on the Cogat (and presumably commensurately high MAP scores) is rejected in favor of a student with lower test scores.
We know that many students who were rejected scored higher than the median of accepted students.

We also know that after the Metis study, MCPS has been trying to improve diversity in the magnet programs. This is a laudable goal as long as it is done in an honest and fair way. If it is done by increasing community outreach and simplifying the application process, fantastic. If it is done by lowering admission standards and taking spots away from more qualified children well then that is not ok. Unfortunately, MCPS has a sorry track record in this area. Many years ago they decided to focus on the achievement gap which is a real problem. There is only so much a school system can do to solve a problem that has highly complex socioeconomic causes. Despite throwing lots of resources to bring test scores up for groups that were lagging, the results were not improving enough and so MCPS has done things like reducing final exams in most high school classes (which causes grade inflation and makes it harder to differentiate between above average and high achievers), changing ES report cards so that nearly everyone is some variant of "proficient". If the data is opaque it is hard to discern how big the achievement gap truly is.

I see their move to just give parents their child's percentiles on the Cogat score to be a similar attempt to obscure information that would tell the public what is actually happening. The raw score for the 99th percentile of COGAT ranges from 135-160. The Cogat mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 16 which means that a child with a score of 160 is more than one standard deviation away from a kid with a 135. I wish there was some way to force MCPS to release the raw test scores of accepted and rejected students organized by home middle school. Then we would see whether they have been able to increase geographic diversity in the magnet programs for a good reason (spreading a wider net) or for a bad reason (discrimination). If it is the former, I will stand up and cheer. If it is the latter, I am going to remain upset.

Well said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

If that is all that happened then I don't think you would CS parents would be upset. Disappointed certainly if your kid does not get a spot but not upset. In fact I think most fair minded people would welcome the tremendous increase in screening. I think what people are upset by is that it sounds like MCPS might be using geography to decide who gets the limited spots in the magnet middle schools. So a kid in a high performing school cluster with 99s across the board on the Cogat (and presumably commensurately high MAP scores) is rejected in favor of a student with lower test scores.
We know that many students who were rejected scored higher than the median of accepted students.

We also know that after the Metis study, MCPS has been trying to improve diversity in the magnet programs. This is a laudable goal as long as it is done in an honest and fair way. If it is done by increasing community outreach and simplifying the application process, fantastic. If it is done by lowering admission standards and taking spots away from more qualified children well then that is not ok. Unfortunately, MCPS has a sorry track record in this area. Many years ago they decided to focus on the achievement gap which is a real problem. There is only so much a school system can do to solve a problem that has highly complex socioeconomic causes. Despite throwing lots of resources to bring test scores up for groups that were lagging, the results were not improving enough and so MCPS has done things like reducing final exams in most high school classes (which causes grade inflation and makes it harder to differentiate between above average and high achievers), changing ES report cards so that nearly everyone is some variant of "proficient". If the data is opaque it is hard to discern how big the achievement gap truly is.

I see their move to just give parents their child's percentiles on the Cogat score to be a similar attempt to obscure information that would tell the public what is actually happening. The raw score for the 99th percentile of COGAT ranges from 135-160. The Cogat mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 16 which means that a child with a score of 160 is more than one standard deviation away from a kid with a 135. I wish there was some way to force MCPS to release the raw test scores of accepted and rejected students organized by home middle school. Then we would see whether they have been able to increase geographic diversity in the magnet programs for a good reason (spreading a wider net) or for a bad reason (discrimination). If it is the former, I will stand up and cheer. If it is the latter, I am going to remain upset.

Well said.

+1 MCPS's lack of transparency, and refusal to release the raw data (even for one's own child) is the problem here. If they have nothing to hide, release the data and let the chips fall where they may!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think most of the HGCs were targeted. If a kid came to HGC from a good home school unless they were an outlier in their HGC they did not get in the MS magnet.

On the other hand, slightly above average URM students from any school and HGC students from poor performing home schools were invited to magnet MS.

We are assigned to a low performing ES, MS and HS. My children have always been in magnet programs and are outliers within the magnet program as well. Still, if the magnet programs are so diluted that any bright kid (but not exceptional child) can be included, I do not want to trek to a magnet program. The value of the magnet program is the peer group first, the parents second, the curriculum third and if we are lucky we get qualified teachers, dedicated coordinator and not hostile administration.

I wonder since when doing well became such a bad thing in American society?

There is absolutely no way you could have the data to support the assertions in bold, so this is just inflammatory.

I don't know if the second point is true, but the first absolutely is. Availability of peer cohort is listed as one of the criteria, and Cold Spring, with historically the highest admission stats across the board, arguably in itself yields three sizeable MS peer cohorts assigned to MSs with enriched (ha!) instruction. Those kids have learned the rudiments of Latin and are reading Shakespeare, and are now accustomed to doing up to 3 hours of homework per day. Many of them scored 99s in 3 or 4 categories, have straight As, very high MAP scores and were rejected. The drop from 25 to 2 admitted suggests only a CS CES child who got perfect scores, or close to it, had a chance. The remaining 97% would like to see the raw data. If the raw data supports admission based on merit, great. If not, the parents have the right to know. That data is also necessary to make a case for comparable instructions tracks at the home school, which the parents were told to advocate for. Knowing if your kid got a 155 vs. a 135 is helpful and important information! Be transparent, MCPS!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Targeted, no. That's not what happened here. Many, many more students were screened. But something is going on that is curious. Because even with many more kids screened you'd still figure that more kids within a cohort of children that have already scored very high scores on the Cogat would be admitted. I have no doubt that the kids admitted are all very bright kids who will do very well, as bright as the kids in the HGC's. I'm not suggesting they aren't. But there may be reasons they were chosen over some of the kids in the HGC's and it might not be, always, because of higher test scores. Or, it could be that with so many children screened the differences came down to very small differences in scores, essentially meaningless differences when it comes down to it. It's just very hard to say exactly the algorithms that were used and why things shook out the way they did.

Except most of the 4000 kids tested this time still would have had to self select two years ago for HGC testing, meaning we don't know how the current HGC kids would compare to the other 3500 if there has been universal testing then. For all we know, there easily could have been tons of kids who should have been in HGCs but weren't because of the application process.

Some CS parents found out the hard way that with more applications this year means the program is more competitive. With everyone talking about it on DCUM and other forums next year will be even more students applying.

If that is all that happened then I don't think you would CS parents would be upset. Disappointed certainly if your kid does not get a spot but not upset. In fact I think most fair minded people would welcome the tremendous increase in screening. I think what people are upset by is that it sounds like MCPS might be using geography to decide who gets the limited spots in the magnet middle schools. So a kid in a high performing school cluster with 99s across the board on the Cogat (and presumably commensurately high MAP scores) is rejected in favor of a student with lower test scores.
We know that many students who were rejected scored higher than the median of accepted students.

We also know that after the Metis study, MCPS has been trying to improve diversity in the magnet programs. This is a laudable goal as long as it is done in an honest and fair way. If it is done by increasing community outreach and simplifying the application process, fantastic. If it is done by lowering admission standards and taking spots away from more qualified children well then that is not ok. Unfortunately, MCPS has a sorry track record in this area. Many years ago they decided to focus on the achievement gap which is a real problem. There is only so much a school system can do to solve a problem that has highly complex socioeconomic causes. Despite throwing lots of resources to bring test scores up for groups that were lagging, the results were not improving enough and so MCPS has done things like reducing final exams in most high school classes (which causes grade inflation and makes it harder to differentiate between above average and high achievers), changing ES report cards so that nearly everyone is some variant of "proficient". If the data is opaque it is hard to discern how big the achievement gap truly is.

I see their move to just give parents their child's percentiles on the Cogat score to be a similar attempt to obscure information that would tell the public what is actually happening. The raw score for the 99th percentile of COGAT ranges from 135-160. The Cogat mean is 100 and the standard deviation is 16 which means that a child with a score of 160 is more than one standard deviation away from a kid with a 135. I wish there was some way to force MCPS to release the raw test scores of accepted and rejected students organized by home middle school. Then we would see whether they have been able to increase geographic diversity in the magnet programs for a good reason (spreading a wider net) or for a bad reason (discrimination). If it is the former, I will stand up and cheer. If it is the latter, I am going to remain upset.

Well said.

+1 MCPS's lack of transparency, and refusal to release the raw data (even for one's own child) is the problem here. If they have nothing to hide, release the data and let the chips fall where they may![/quote]
+1

[Anonymous]

They used to give a number that was out of 160-3 categories ...my child (a current hs sophmore) got her scores that way

[Anonymous]

Np. The COGAT was never intended for distinguishing above 99%. It’s a group administered ability test for the purposes of screening. It does not identify “exceptional” children apart from 99% kids. You all are putting way too much stock in this test.

I lived in a school district which did a very similar thing with their gifted magnet schools. 95% was the threshold. Kids who scored above that were eligible for a lottery and the school district played with demographics as they saw fit. The only difference was all kids were screened and those who did well were given a real IQ test by one school psych, and that was the only score that mattered. (No appeals or outside testing)