Takoma, Easter Magnets. MCPS Pilots Universal Evaluation Process.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Previously only a small number of students even applied to these programs. Most often it was children of hyper-involved well-off parents. So many gifted children from less affluent families never even applied. The new process definitely resulted in identifying a higher caliber student than the older system. It also didn't hurt the test was revised to reduce the impact of test prep so truly gifted students were identified not just children of parents who could afford expensive prep classes. The county really knocked this out of the park as it were.

My problem is that they didn’t do enough to ensure gifted kids who “have a cohort at their home school” are getting enough enrichment. The classes they purport to be offering for those kids isn’t really acceleration, so they’re basically telling those kids to take a hike.

Have you seen the new courses?

I’ve seen the descriptions and they’re barely different than what was previously offered.

There hasn't even been 1 day of teaching yet in these new courses, and you're already complaining about them. I guess you're being pro-active.

I just did the training. The topics are the same, but the pedagogy and materials aren’t. This is true also of the actual magnet SS course.

Are you saying that the courses at the magnet programs are changing materials and teaching approach?

We’re supposed to. I did two days of training for the magnet SS course and one day for the non-magnet enriched one. Central Office is asking to see school-developed lessons to ensure it meets the needs of gifted learners. There were JHU CTY staff there to offer feedback.

Won’t the Magnet SS course differ substantially from the enriched SS course in part because the Magnet SS course will be taught in conjunction with Magnet English and Magnet media courses?

There's interdisciplinary elements, but that's mainly for projects. Not how the courses will be taught on a day by day basis. Especially since the English and Media teachers at the two schools aren't doing the same books or projects. There was a lot of time spent discussing whether an effort would be made to teach the same books and do the same media projects. The consensus, in the end, was not this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea that the tests are sufficient to identify "truly gifted" students is ridiculous. The addition of the "peer cohort" criterion shows this for what it really was -- a social engineering effort. Which is not wrong in and of itself but dressing it up as a more objective process is not accurate.

And I agree with the overall point that MCPS is failing the smart kids, whether or not you want to call them gifted or whether that term really fits. The advanced courses and tracking so that kids are grouped and not lumped into classes needs to be offered at all home schools. I've had kids go through both a well-regarded W feeder middle school and a magnet middle school, and the W feeder middle school was a waste of three years.

Why did you stay? You should have put your kid who was so advanced but not enough for magnet in private.

NP. I'm taking a wild guess here: PP didn't have 40K per year in spare change to 'put her advanced kid in private'.

I'm also guessing you're rolling in it, but your child isn't that bright. Amiright?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea that the tests are sufficient to identify "truly gifted" students is ridiculous. The addition of the "peer cohort" criterion shows this for what it really was -- a social engineering effort. Which is not wrong in and of itself but dressing it up as a more objective process is not accurate.

And I agree with the overall point that MCPS is failing the smart kids, whether or not you want to call them gifted or whether that term really fits. The advanced courses and tracking so that kids are grouped and not lumped into classes needs to be offered at all home schools. I've had kids go through both a well-regarded W feeder middle school and a magnet middle school, and the W feeder middle school was a waste of three years.

Why did you stay? You should have put your kid who was so advanced but not enough for magnet in private.

NP. I'm taking a wild guess here: PP didn't have 40K per year in spare change to 'put her advanced kid in private'.

I'm also guessing you're rolling in it, but your child isn't that bright. Amiright?

Some of that money didn’t go towards intensive prepping?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Some of that money didn’t go towards intensive prepping?

DP. The expensive prep classes that I'm aware of, for the middle-school magnet test, ran around $1,000. It's still a long way from there to private-school tuition. Plus if the test-prep classes made any difference at all, then as far as I can tell, it was only at the margins. Lots of kids did test prep the year my kid was in fifth grade. Most of them didn't get in. And some of the kids who did get in, didn't do test prep. I'm in the Siberian Hinterlands.

The test prep companies certainly want you to believe that they make a difference in magnet-school admissions. But they have a financial interest in making you believe this, because otherwise you wouldn't enroll your fifth-grader in a $1,000 test-prep class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The idea that the tests are sufficient to identify "truly gifted" students is ridiculous. The addition of the "peer cohort" criterion shows this for what it really was -- a social engineering effort. Which is not wrong in and of itself but dressing it up as a more objective process is not accurate.

And I agree with the overall point that MCPS is failing the smart kids, whether or not you want to call them gifted or whether that term really fits. The advanced courses and tracking so that kids are grouped and not lumped into classes needs to be offered at all home schools. I've had kids go through both a well-regarded W feeder middle school and a magnet middle school, and the W feeder middle school was a waste of three years.

Why did you stay? You should have put your kid who was so advanced but not enough for magnet in private.

NP. I'm taking a wild guess here: PP didn't have 40K per year in spare change to 'put her advanced kid in private'.

I'm also guessing you're rolling in it, but your child isn't that bright. Amiright?

Some of that money didn’t go towards intensive prepping?

My kid took a prep course for a successful MCPS High School magnet admission. We spent $1000 total, for a single class, over 3 years. During that time frame, we rented in a W feeder and definitely could not afford private school. As soon as my daughter entered her magnet HS, we moved to a non-W area to save on housing.

My daughter's SES is a little below a typical magnet student, but not significantly so. There are certainly other students whose financial situation is more precarious than ours.

We are grateful to the county for creating magnet programs for dedicated students. I do not feel that being "rich" is a determinant for entering. It's more that parents want to hedge their bets and have several children. There may be one (or more) who attends a magnet, but others need a good non-magnet school. That is what causes the parents to sacrifice and live in W areas. Once the need is lifted many, like us, move to less expensive areas with average schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

My kid took a prep course for a successful MCPS High School magnet admission. We spent $1000 total, for a single class, over 3 years. During that time frame, we rented in a W feeder and definitely could not afford private school. As soon as my daughter entered her magnet HS, we moved to a non-W area to save on housing.

My daughter's SES is a little below a typical magnet student, but not significantly so. There are certainly other students whose financial situation is more precarious than ours.

We are grateful to the county for creating magnet programs for dedicated students. I do not feel that being "rich" is a determinant for entering. It's more that parents want to hedge their bets and have several children. There may be one (or more) who attends a magnet, but others need a good non-magnet school. That is what causes the parents to sacrifice and live in W areas. Once the need is lifted many, like us, move to less expensive areas with average schools.

You just made the argument for the middle-school cohort criterion. Did you intend to do that? That is, Bethesda and Potomac are where the "good schools" are, so there's no need for kids zoned for those schools to attend the test-in magnet program. The test-in magnet program is for kids from less expensive areas with average schools - as you describe them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

My kid took a prep course for a successful MCPS High School magnet admission. We spent $1000 total, for a single class, over 3 years. During that time frame, we rented in a W feeder and definitely could not afford private school. As soon as my daughter entered her magnet HS, we moved to a non-W area to save on housing.

My daughter's SES is a little below a typical magnet student, but not significantly so. There are certainly other students whose financial situation is more precarious than ours.

We are grateful to the county for creating magnet programs for dedicated students. I do not feel that being "rich" is a determinant for entering. It's more that parents want to hedge their bets and have several children. There may be one (or more) who attends a magnet, but others need a good non-magnet school. That is what causes the parents to sacrifice and live in W areas. Once the need is lifted many, like us, move to less expensive areas with average schools.

You just made the argument for the middle-school cohort criterion. Did you intend to do that? That is, Bethesda and Potomac are where the "good schools" are, so there's no need for kids zoned for those schools to attend the test-in magnet program. The test-in magnet program is for kids from less expensive areas with average schools - as you describe them.

I did not intend to make an argument for middle-school cohort criterion. Test-in magnet schools should be for best-prepared students. Otherwise, you will see the destruction of the magnet brand and reduction in number of selective college admissions.

The place that needs to be reformed is not the magnet school selection process, nor the schools themselves. The magnet division of MCPS is already working on a national level and should be left alone. What needs reform is education at the regular schools. Specifically, there need to be more opportunities for children in ALL schools to have access to a deeper curriculum, especially in maths and sciences.

[Anonymous]

Parents and students see the magnet programs as an educational opportunity for the highest performing students and merit base.

MCPS sees the program very differently. The magnet locations were chosen to attract families with higher performing students (which at the demographically meant higher SES and white) into poorer, failing schools. It was an attempt at desegregation at a time when bussing and school assignment based on race was ruled illegal. The r20-25 reserved seats that don't compete at the same level for admission for in-boundary TPMS students was/is another example of trying to attract/retain UMC whites to live in the area. While not every seat goes to a UMC white student who performed lower that other kids in the county, most do. The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance that people moving into the area see when searching for new homes. In many ways, this worked until GS started doing equity ratings revealing that large portions of the schools were significantly below grade level.

About a year age MCPS did a study and found the data that they knew all along - minority children were significantly underrepresented and Asian children were significantly over represented. So MCPS adjusted their admissions process to not only do universal evaluation (which is a good thing) but to also restrict students that historically had been Asian residing in high performing school clusters (this is awful) and lower the admissions bar to the magnets to yield the racial profile the school system wanted to see. For parents, residents, lawyers and basically anyone not in MCPS this is terrible. From the MCPS perspective however where getting all schools performing in the middle to claim success and getting the demographic optics they want it made perfect sense.

If MCPS had simply put in place universal evaluation and then made a focused attempt at improving enrichment for ANY kid that identified as gifted but wasn't high enough to get in it would have been a move in the right direction.The "cohort" excuse is simply racial profiling no different than the "geographic" shenanigans that that the Rs play to suppress minority voters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance

I know of two programs in DCC high schools that are open to students from elsewhere in the county (i.e., outside of the DCC) - the math/sci program at Blair, and the visual arts program at Einstein. Am I missing any? Do you consider two programs to be proliferation?

[Anonymous]

The accusation that MCPS lowered admissions standards to admit less-qualified poor, black, and Hispanic students instead of more-qualified Asian-American students reappeared over pages and pages and pages and pages and pages on DCUM. Without ever any evidence to support it.

Also, there was going to be a lawsuit, and it was going to be a slam-dunk that MCPS would lose. That reappeared over pages and pages on DCUM too. What happened to that lawsuit?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents and students see the magnet programs as an educational opportunity for the highest performing students and merit base.

MCPS sees the program very differently. The magnet locations were chosen to attract families with higher performing students (which at the demographically meant higher SES and white) into poorer, failing schools. It was an attempt at desegregation at a time when bussing and school assignment based on race was ruled illegal. The r20-25 reserved seats that don't compete at the same level for admission for in-boundary TPMS students was/is another example of trying to attract/retain UMC whites to live in the area. While not every seat goes to a UMC white student who performed lower that other kids in the county, most do. The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance that people moving into the area see when searching for new homes. In many ways, this worked until GS started doing equity ratings revealing that large portions of the schools were significantly below grade level.

About a year age MCPS did a study and found the data that they knew all along - minority children were significantly underrepresented and Asian children were significantly over represented. So MCPS adjusted their admissions process to not only do universal evaluation (which is a good thing) but to also restrict students that historically had been Asian residing in high performing school clusters (this is awful) and lower the admissions bar to the magnets to yield the racial profile the school system wanted to see. For parents, residents, lawyers and basically anyone not in MCPS this is terrible. From the MCPS perspective however where getting all schools performing in the middle to claim success and getting the demographic optics they want it made perfect sense.

If MCPS had simply put in place universal evaluation and then made a focused attempt at improving enrichment for ANY kid that identified as gifted but wasn't high enough to get in it would have been a move in the right direction.The "cohort" excuse is simply racial profiling no different than the "geographic" shenanigans that that the Rs play to suppress minority voters.

The new TPMS class did not end up with significantly more URM students. There are fewer Asian students, who are now held back with artificial restrictions based on their home school district. Their spots are taken up by top students in the previously less represented school districts who have somewhat lower scores than rejected W-based Asian students. The accepted students are overwhelmingly white. So you have a less prepared class with fewer Asians and more whites, with a broader countywide geographic diversity. How exactly this is better has not been explained.

Short of instituting direct racial quotas, MCPS will not be able to achieve their goal of making magnet education available to URM students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance

I know of two programs in DCC high schools that are open to students from elsewhere in the county (i.e., outside of the DCC) - the math/sci program at Blair, and the visual arts program at Einstein. Am I missing any? Do you consider two programs to be proliferation?

There is also a biomedical engineering mini-magnet at Wheaton, the CAP program at Blair, the Visual Arts at Einstein that you mentioned.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/downcounty/

Application Programs Open to DCC Students
Biomedical Magnet Program
Communication Arts Program (CAP)
Engineering Magnet Program
Leadership Training Institute (LTI)

[Anonymous]

^^ You will need to click on the "APPLICATION ONLY PROGRAMS" tab in the middle of the page. There is no direct link ^^

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The accusation that MCPS lowered admissions standards to admit less-qualified poor, black, and Hispanic students instead of more-qualified Asian-American students reappeared over pages and pages and pages and pages and pages on DCUM. Without ever any evidence to support it.

Also, there was going to be a lawsuit, and it was going to be a slam-dunk that MCPS would lose. That reappeared over pages and pages on DCUM too. What happened to that lawsuit?

MCPS refused to release the MS magnet test data on the admirred and rejected students after multiple requests. Everyone is speculating but they they got no data to support their claim. MCPS owns the data and has total control over your child’s school life; it can be cc2.0 or magnet admission.
Unless MCPS touches the UMC and MC white students’ benefit, they will not face real resistance. UMC familes can affort private schools and can bring a lawsuit.
However, Asian families, most of them are first generation of immigrants, cannot afford private schools in this area and 100% depend on public school. It is daunting task to navigate the school system which is totally different from their own school experience. When they saw their child’s education opportunity is robbed by MCPS under the name of diversity, an angry reaction is the least you can expect. Fortunately, for MCPS, the angry voice from Asian parents may be the only reaction from Asian parents. The affected Asian parents will not bring a lawsuit to MCPS, because they cannot afford, cannot find a lawyer to take their case, or decided to let it go because their own child already missed the chance and need to move on.

Dear PP, you are right, there will be no lawsuit from Asian parents!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The proliferation of programs throughout the DCC to attract better performing students from elsewhere in the county is designed to bump up the primary score performance

I know of two programs in DCC high schools that are open to students from elsewhere in the county (i.e., outside of the DCC) - the math/sci program at Blair, and the visual arts program at Einstein. Am I missing any? Do you consider two programs to be proliferation?

There is also a biomedical engineering mini-magnet at Wheaton, the CAP program at Blair, the Visual Arts at Einstein that you mentioned.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/downcounty/

Application Programs Open to DCC Students
Biomedical Magnet Program
Communication Arts Program (CAP)
Engineering Magnet Program
Leadership Training Institute (LTI)

Those programs are only open to students in the DCC.