Care to share your child's CES raw scores?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who does admissions for a highly competitive program (not CES). She said that they really don’t have enough funds for all the candidates who could benefit from the program and who would meet the criteria, and once you’ve narrowed it down to the best of the best, it’s basically a little random because it’s impossible to differentiate between the most qualified. I think it’s the same thing here. Everyone needs to accept that, among the students with the super high scores, it’s basically a lottery.

This, AND people need to remember that it has always been a little bit of a sliding scale between different CES locations. This has always been the case, and does not represent a change in protocol this year.

Not this. MCPS stated that they look at peer cohort. Do the other competitive programs do the same?

I don't think at the CES level, the cohort argument is that important. For example, Cold Spring draws mostly from a handful of schools that feeds into Wootton and Churchill. They are all good. Maybe Stone Mill used to send a few more in.

What they did is more subtle, they separate a few schools out to give them a home CES, I believe for the rest of the catchment area, it is a lot easier to get into Fox Chapel now that Rachel Carson and more importantly Matschunaga is no longer eligible to send kids to the regional center.

[Anonymous]

Perfect scores don't matter at schools with a large cohort since CES isn't necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who does admissions for a highly competitive program (not CES). She said that they really don’t have enough funds for all the candidates who could benefit from the program and who would meet the criteria, and once you’ve narrowed it down to the best of the best, it’s basically a little random because it’s impossible to differentiate between the most qualified. I think it’s the same thing here. Everyone needs to accept that, among the students with the super high scores, it’s basically a lottery.

This, AND people need to remember that it has always been a little bit of a sliding scale between different CES locations. This has always been the case, and does not represent a change in protocol this year.

Not this. MCPS stated that they look at peer cohort. Do the other competitive programs do the same?

MCPS has always looked at peer cohort. I think you are confusing the middle school admissions this year, where cohort seemed to play a larger role than in the past, and CES admissions this year, where cohort appears to have played the same amount of role as it always has.

This makes sense, right? The middle school magnets draw from a much larger geographic area with much larger demographic swings. CES admissions have always been rich kids vs. rich kids and poorer kids vs. poorer kids, due to the regional model.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Perfect scores don't matter at schools with a large cohort since CES isn't necessary.

There is no school in MCPS that sent zero kids to a CES. As always, the bar for getting into Cold Spring CES or Chevy Chase CES was higher than the bar for getting into a program in another part of MCPS, but that has ever been thus.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP again. Two kids in DC's grades who did get accepted also had 99% percentile on the test; otherwise, similar stats. So, either their raw scores were higher, or their MAPs were, but it doesn't really matter at this point.

I'm just a bit surprised the county didn't provide parents with the acceptance score per each CES, like they did a couple of years ago.

It's not a surprise knowing what their goals were. They are hiding it because it would be too obvious then that students with lower scores were admitted over higher ones because of "cohort". It would be obvious that the bar was lowered, which they keep saying it hasn't been.

How, specifically, would the aggregate score for accepted students at each CES show that individual students with lower scores were admitted over individual students with higher scores?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think at the CES level, the cohort argument is that important. For example, Cold Spring draws mostly from a handful of schools that feeds into Wootton and Churchill. They are all good. Maybe Stone Mill used to send a few more in.

What they did is more subtle, they separate a few schools out to give them a home CES, I believe for the rest of the catchment area, it is a lot easier to get into Fox Chapel now that Rachel Carson and more importantly Matschunaga is no longer eligible to send kids to the regional center.

Parents: How come my kid has to have a long bus ride to a different school to get an accelerated/enriched program? Why can't my kid get this at their home school? Boo, MCPS! Boo!
MCPS: OK, let's add an accelerated/enriched program to some home schools.
Parents: How come my kid doesn't get to have a long bus ride to a different school for accelerated/enriched classes? How come my kid has to get this at their home school? Boo, MCPS! Boo!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, someone needs to get in given that they want every school represented in the centers. Raw scores in this are arguably more meaningful than a few points higher on MAPS.

That's it. Someone does need to get in, from each school, and it is all nice and dandy, I just refuse to buy their slogan about 'peerless outliers'. We've known these children since K, they all are in the same ballpark, achievement- and ability-wise. No one of them has solved Fermat's last theorem.

What enrages me the most in all of this is total lack of transparency, covered by in-your-face BS. If they'd just said they were taking top 3 highest achievers from each class, with raw scores given the highest weight in the decision-making, followed by MAPs, followed by Inview results, followed by each child's involvement in school activities (or should this one be moved up?), followed by yesterday's star alignment, that would give parents a realistic prognosis on where their child stands. Instead, they feed you this 'peerless outlier' crap and expect you to eat it up. Don't insult my intelligence, ladies.

PP, I felt some of your same emotions during the MS magnet admissions, when my extremely high scoring kid was rejected and other UMC kids going to the same middle school were accepted. What helped a little was when someone pointed out that MCPS is not saying that everyone accepted is an outlier. They are simply saying that your kid is not an outlier. That's very different. There are very few outliers, if you think about it. MCPS doesn't have enough information about UMC kids with no special needs to determine whether a certain 99% kid is an outlier compared to another 99% kid - especially for the CES process, with only the COGAT screening test given. You might know your kid is an outlier compared to other kids, but the MCPS selection committee wouldn't really have known. While parents now know the raw COGAT scores, I don't think the MCPS selection committee had that data (at least they didn't for the MS admissions). So among the UMC kids from high performing schools, it was essentially a lottery. The only real "outliers" are kids at lower performing schools, where maybe there is just one or two 99 percentilers compared to the rest of the class, or situations where a kid who got 92% but dealt with FARMS status and other adversities gets a boost. And this same reasoning applies to all the other metrics they used in the process, not just the COGAT.

Anyway, I sympathize with your frustration. It's hard to not get what you want for your kid. I suggest supplementing, and spending lots of time on extracurriculars like sports and music to develop the brain in other ways. With a high school kid now, I see that the younger years were the times to put in all the hard work on that kind of stuff, because by high school there are so many other demands on a kid's time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who does admissions for a highly competitive program (not CES). She said that they really don’t have enough funds for all the candidates who could benefit from the program and who would meet the criteria, and once you’ve narrowed it down to the best of the best, it’s basically a little random because it’s impossible to differentiate between the most qualified. I think it’s the same thing here. Everyone needs to accept that, among the students with the super high scores, it’s basically a lottery.

This, AND people need to remember that it has always been a little bit of a sliding scale between different CES locations. This has always been the case, and does not represent a change in protocol this year.

Not this. MCPS stated that they look at peer cohort. Do the other competitive programs do the same?

I don't think at the CES level, the cohort argument is that important. For example, Cold Spring draws mostly from a handful of schools that feeds into Wootton and Churchill. They are all good. Maybe Stone Mill used to send a few more in.

What they did is more subtle, they separate a few schools out to give them a home CES, I believe for the rest of the catchment area, it is a lot easier to get into Fox Chapel now that Rachel Carson and more importantly Matschunaga is no longer eligible to send kids to the regional center.

This is exactly why they did it this way.. so the kids on the eastern side don't have to compete so much with the kids from the western side. And it does indeed lower the threshold since those kids are not having to compete with kids who typically score higher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have a friend who does admissions for a highly competitive program (not CES). She said that they really don’t have enough funds for all the candidates who could benefit from the program and who would meet the criteria, and once you’ve narrowed it down to the best of the best, it’s basically a little random because it’s impossible to differentiate between the most qualified. I think it’s the same thing here. Everyone needs to accept that, among the students with the super high scores, it’s basically a lottery.

This, AND people need to remember that it has always been a little bit of a sliding scale between different CES locations. This has always been the case, and does not represent a change in protocol this year.

Not this. MCPS stated that they look at peer cohort. Do the other competitive programs do the same?

I don't think at the CES level, the cohort argument is that important. For example, Cold Spring draws mostly from a handful of schools that feeds into Wootton and Churchill. They are all good. Maybe Stone Mill used to send a few more in.

What they did is more subtle, they separate a few schools out to give them a home CES, I believe for the rest of the catchment area, it is a lot easier to get into Fox Chapel now that Rachel Carson and more importantly Matschunaga is no longer eligible to send kids to the regional center.

This is exactly why they did it this way.. so the kids on the eastern side don't have to compete so much with the kids from the western side. And it does indeed lower the threshold since those kids are not having to compete with kids who typically score higher.

You know this because you work at the Central Office?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think at the CES level, the cohort argument is that important. For example, Cold Spring draws mostly from a handful of schools that feeds into Wootton and Churchill. They are all good. Maybe Stone Mill used to send a few more in.

What they did is more subtle, they separate a few schools out to give them a home CES, I believe for the rest of the catchment area, it is a lot easier to get into Fox Chapel now that Rachel Carson and more importantly Matschunaga is no longer eligible to send kids to the regional center.

Parents: How come my kid has to have a long bus ride to a different school to get an accelerated/enriched program? Why can't my kid get this at their home school? Boo, MCPS! Boo!
MCPS: OK, let's add an accelerated/enriched program to some home schools.
Parents: How come my kid doesn't get to have a long bus ride to a different school for accelerated/enriched classes? How come my kid has to get this at their home school? Boo, MCPS! Boo!

OP. As of today, there is no 'accelerated/enriched program' at my child's elementary school; you don't get into a CES, you're stuck with crappy 2.0 and that's that. And seeing what's going on with new curriculum RFP, there's little hope things will improve in the future. And, for the record, I'd hate for my kid to have a long bus ride but we would have done it, just to make sure she doesn't waste two more years at school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, someone needs to get in given that they want every school represented in the centers. Raw scores in this are arguably more meaningful than a few points higher on MAPS.

That's it. Someone does need to get in, from each school, and it is all nice and dandy, I just refuse to buy their slogan about 'peerless outliers'. We've known these children since K, they all are in the same ballpark, achievement- and ability-wise. No one of them has solved Fermat's last theorem.

What enrages me the most in all of this is total lack of transparency, covered by in-your-face BS. If they'd just said they were taking top 3 highest achievers from each class, with raw scores given the highest weight in the decision-making, followed by MAPs, followed by Inview results, followed by each child's involvement in school activities (or should this one be moved up?), followed by yesterday's star alignment, that would give parents a realistic prognosis on where their child stands. Instead, they feed you this 'peerless outlier' crap and expect you to eat it up. Don't insult my intelligence, ladies.

PP, I felt some of your same emotions during the MS magnet admissions, when my extremely high scoring kid was rejected and other UMC kids going to the same middle school were accepted. What helped a little was when someone pointed out that MCPS is not saying that everyone accepted is an outlier. They are simply saying that your kid is not an outlier. That's very different. There are very few outliers, if you think about it. MCPS doesn't have enough information about UMC kids with no special needs to determine whether a certain 99% kid is an outlier compared to another 99% kid - especially for the CES process, with only the COGAT screening test given. You might know your kid is an outlier compared to other kids, but the MCPS selection committee wouldn't really have known. While parents now know the raw COGAT scores, I don't think the MCPS selection committee had that data (at least they didn't for the MS admissions). So among the UMC kids from high performing schools, it was essentially a lottery. The only real "outliers" are kids at lower performing schools, where maybe there is just one or two 99 percentilers compared to the rest of the class, or situations where a kid who got 92% but dealt with FARMS status and other adversities gets a boost. And this same reasoning applies to all the other metrics they used in the process, not just the COGAT.

Anyway, I sympathize with your frustration. It's hard to not get what you want for your kid. I suggest supplementing, and spending lots of time on extracurriculars like sports and music to develop the brain in other ways. With a high school kid now, I see that the younger years were the times to put in all the hard work on that kind of stuff, because by high school there are so many other demands on a kid's time.

Thank you so much, PP, for your thoughtful response!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I don't think at the CES level, the cohort argument is that important. For example, Cold Spring draws mostly from a handful of schools that feeds into Wootton and Churchill. They are all good. Maybe Stone Mill used to send a few more in.

What they did is more subtle, they separate a few schools out to give them a home CES, I believe for the rest of the catchment area, it is a lot easier to get into Fox Chapel now that Rachel Carson and more importantly Matschunaga is no longer eligible to send kids to the regional center.

This is exactly why they did it this way.. so the kids on the eastern side don't have to compete so much with the kids from the western side. And it does indeed lower the threshold since those kids are not having to compete with kids who typically score higher.

PP is talking about the Fox Chapel CES (which used to include Rachel Carson ES and Matsunaga ES, but no longer includes these two elementary schools because they each now have their own home CES). What are you talking about? MCPS put local CESs at Rachel Carson and Matsunaga so that the kids from Christa McAuliffe ES don't have to compete so much with the kids from Monocacy ES?

[Anonymous]

This is exactly why they did it this way.. so the kids on the eastern side don't have to compete so much with the kids from the western side. And it does indeed lower the threshold since those kids are not having to compete with kids who typically score higher.

Right, which is 100% reasonable when you have a program with regional centers that is serving kids who are 9 - 11.

Yes, the threshold for getting into Pine Crest may be slightly lower than the threshold for getting into Cold Spring. But...why do you care? There are regional centers because MCPS recognizes that the CES programs should not have kids bussing all over the county the way middle school magnets do. Because MCPS is badly segregated, that will mean that programs that serve poorer kids have a (slightly) different threshold for admissions than programs in the richer parts of the county.

That's entirely normal and reasonable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

This is exactly why they did it this way.. so the kids on the eastern side don't have to compete so much with the kids from the western side. And it does indeed lower the threshold since those kids are not having to compete with kids who typically score higher.

Right, which is 100% reasonable when you have a program with regional centers that is serving kids who are 9 - 11.

Yes, the threshold for getting into Pine Crest may be slightly lower than the threshold for getting into Cold Spring. But...why do you care? There are regional centers because MCPS recognizes that the CES programs should not have kids bussing all over the county the way middle school magnets do. Because MCPS is badly segregated, that will mean that programs that serve poorer kids have a (slightly) different threshold for admissions than programs in the richer parts of the county.

That's entirely normal and reasonable.

Some parents mistakenly believe that higher property taxes entitles them to better public schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

This is exactly why they did it this way.. so the kids on the eastern side don't have to compete so much with the kids from the western side. And it does indeed lower the threshold since those kids are not having to compete with kids who typically score higher.

Right, which is 100% reasonable when you have a program with regional centers that is serving kids who are 9 - 11.

Yes, the threshold for getting into Pine Crest may be slightly lower than the threshold for getting into Cold Spring. But...why do you care? There are regional centers because MCPS recognizes that the CES programs should not have kids bussing all over the county the way middle school magnets do. Because MCPS is badly segregated, that will mean that programs that serve poorer kids have a (slightly) different threshold for admissions than programs in the richer parts of the county.

That's entirely normal and reasonable.

Some parents mistakenly believe that higher property taxes entitles them to better public schools.

The funny thing is that they probably get them, if you define "better schools" as schools that are more economically homogeneous, with parent bodies that can provide funds for schools to purchase alternate curriculum materials.

But they can't be satisfied with that. They need all of that PLUS for other kids to get nothing. It's like that old Russian joke about the cow. It isn't enough to get two cows, you also have to kill your neighbor's cow in order to be happy.